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EDWARD BOWEN 



EDWABD BOWEN 



A MEMOIB 



BY THE 



EEV. THE HON. WJiE.^BOWEN, M.A. 



WITH APPENDICES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 



LONGMANS, GEEEN, AND CO. 

39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 

NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 

1902 

All rights reserved 






'KINDLINESS and neighbourhood, and child-life. 

AND THE FRESH WIND OF HEAVEN . . . AND THB BUD 
BREAK UPON THE STAINLESS PEAKS, AND CONTEMPT OF 
WRONG, AND PAIN, AND DEATH.' 

to(t> Ok [ 



PEEFATOBY NOTE 



This memoir of Edward Bowen is written to meet 
the needs of two classes of readers : the first, his 
old friends and pupils ; the second, scientific educa- 
tionists. It is for the sake of the first that I have 
dwelt, at what may seem to some rather dispropor- 
tionate length, upon his work before ' youth had 
grown to man.' But I am confident that those who 
cared for him not as a leader of his profession but as 
one by whose side they ' trod the rough path of the 
world,' and whom they loved and admired with a love 
and admiration that they have given to few others 
however near and dear to them, will wish to have 
these specimens of his earlier power and talent. 
As regards the educationists, the memoir will, I 
hope, show them a man pre-eminent among Public 
School Masters, even in a survey of the last hun- 
dred years, who in some things differed widely from 
commonly received opinions, and entertained ideals 
which have yet to find their full expression in 
general practice. Edward Bowen's influence has 
been very great at Harrow, but it has yet to be 
fully felt through all the length and breadth of the 
scholastic world. 

The responsibility for this memoir was offered to 



vi PREFATORY NOTE 

two of his colleagues, and it was only when they felt 
unable to accept it, that it passed to me, his nephew. 
I have in writing it laboured under one serious dis- 
advantage ; though an old Harrovian, I was never in 

Edward Bowen's house or form. I have therefore 
had to depend on others to make good what was 
lacking in these respects. But none surpassed my- 
self in one qualification — in affection for him ; and 
I may perhaps add that during the last years of his 
life I knew him very intimately. 

I need not mention seriatim those colleagues and 
pupils of Edward Bowen who have helped me in this 
task, and without whose willing assistance it could 
never have been accomplished. The usual expres- 
sions of thanks have a formal air, and I am there- 
fore unwilling to use them to those who have assisted 
me in these outlines of a portrait of one of the noblest 
and best men whom any of us has ever been privi- 
leged to know. It will have been to them, as to me, 
a sad pleasure to do whatever could be done by us for 
the memory of one who will always hold a place by 
himself in our recollections. We are only too well 
aware that we ' shall not look upon his like again.' 

I owe it to the courteous co-operation of Messrs. 
Macmillan, Messrs. Chapman & Hall, the Editor of 
the ' Journal of Education,' and the Controller of 
His Majesty's Stationery Office, that I have been 
able to make use of some of the matter which is 
included in this volume. 

W. E. B. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

PREFATORY NOTE v 



MEMOIR 



APPENDICES 

ESSAYS : 

I. The Influence of Scenery on National Character . 263 

II. The Force of Habit 280 

III. Modern War 297 

IV. On Teaching by Means of Grammar .... 302 
V. The Proposed Control of the Public Schools by 

the Universities 316 

VI. Games 328 

VII. The Commune of Paris, 1871 336 

VIII. Evidence before the Royal Commission on Secondary 

Education on July 25, 1894 357 

IX. Arnoldides Chiffers ; or, The Attitude of the 

Schoolmaster • . ... 369 

SONGS AND VERSES: 

I. Forty Years On 376 

II. Lyon of Preston 377 

III. Raleigh 378 

IV. Queen Elizabeth 379 

V. St. Joles 380 

VI. She was a Shepherdess ....... 381 

VII. Grandpapa's Grandpapa 382 

VIII. ' Byron Lay ' . . 383 

IX. Giants 384 

X. October 385 



Vlll 



EDWARD BOWEX 



SONGS AX 

XI. 

XII. 

XIII. 

XIV. 

XV. 

XVI. 

XVII. 

XVIII. 

XIX. 

XX. 

XXI. 

XXII. 

XXIII. 

XXIV. 

XXV. 

XXVI. 

XXVII. 

XXVIII. 

XXIX. 

XXX. 

XXXI. 

XXXII. 



D VERSES- eonUm 

I'AOK 

Euclid 386 

Tiik Voice of tijh P.kli 

UNDBRNBATB the Bkiny Ska 388 

Sober Dick 389 

Willow the King 

june and the scholar 

Cats and Dogs 

Fairies 

Jack and Joe 39.3 

Wimbledon. 1879 396 

Larry 

Books 398 

Down the Hill 399 

Awake ! 399 

Good Xight 400 

Songs '."1 

The Xiner 403 

Plump a Lump 404 

Tom 404 

A Gentleman's a-Bowling 406 

If Time is up 407 

Many Years Ago 407 



Lord's, 1873 408 

Lord's, 1878 409 

Lord's, 1900 410 

From the Visitors' Book, Buttekmehe Inn, Cbdioiookwatbb 111 

An Episode of Balaclava 41 '2 

P. L. C 

Shemuel 114 

P. G 11,-, 

F. P 416 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Portrait of Edward E. Bowen, with Autograph . Frontispiece 
Portrait at the age of about 25 years . . .to face -p. 56 
Portrait at the age of about 35 years ... „ 132 

* The Grove ' „ 194 

A ' Celebration Tea ' in the Garden at ' The Grove ' „ 216 



EDWARD BOWBN 



Eminence as a public schoolmaster would not by itself 
necessarily justify a memoir of the work of a lifetime. 
There are many men in the front rank of our educational 
army showing important qualities — a power of organisation, 
a capacity for discipline, a gift for teaching, a character 
which elicits loyalty and affection — who would not have any 
very strong claim, even in these days when ' of making books 
there is no end,' to a biographical record of their labours 
and successes. And if the best that could be said of Edward 
Bowen were that he was one of those excellent and high- 
minded masters to whom we owe the value of our public 
school system, it might well have been felt that his life 
should have been allowed to pass out of human sight with- 
out any further memorial than private affection and esteem. 
But when one who is not merely eminent, but in some 
respects almost unique, dies after long years of public service 
— years marked by striking and attractive attainments of 
various kinds — it is only right and fitting that some attempt 
should be made to extend the circle of those who hitherto 
have felt, it may be his force and power, it may be his charm 
and persuasiveness, by some sketch of him, even though it 
be but a comparatively slight one ; nor is the justification of 
such a sketch any the less complete — on the contrary, the 
case behind it is strengthened — if, as in the present instance, 
the man of whom it is a brief account was, from the very 
nature of his work and calling, known only to a few, in 
comparison with the many who are acquainted with the 
name of a leading statesman or a victorious general. A 
master at a public school scarcely occupies a very prominent 

B 



2 EDWAED BOWEN 

place in the eyes of the nation at large, unless indeed he 
ventures out of his own proper sphere into some other, such 
as politics or theology. As a schoolmaster, however, he is 
known well enough by those who have the desire and the 
opportunity to make themselves conversant with the inner 
working of the great educational machine ; but to the out- 
side world he is known, either not at all, or only very super- 
ficially. Especially is this the case if he never takes a head- 
mastership, and is always in theory no more than one of the 
ordinary rank and file. The present memoir is of a man who 
was from first to last an assistant master, though for many 
years he was responsible for the separate organisation and 
direction of an important side of the school work. At the 
same time it is an account of a man who is felt by almost all 
who were brought into real contact with him to have been 
largely unlike anyone else, to have possessed qualities and 
gifts, powers and capacities, which were of most remarkable 
worth and brilliance, and such as hardly any men — even 
when a long period of time is allowed for the comparison — 
can claim to share with him. 

Doubtless there were some sides to Edward Bowen 
which, taken one by one, could be more or less easily 
paralleled. Not a few men have been excellent scholars 
and have possessed literary gifts ; many men have gained the 
regard and confidence of their colleagues or subordinates ; 
many men have shown a power of genuine friendship ; many 
men have been able to win the love of those younger, even 
much younger, than themselves, and to retain that exquisite 
sympathy with child-life which we never see without being 
touched by it ; many men have been able to lighten 
drudgery and to add interest to labour. In possessing one 
or another of these qualities Edward Bowen was not more 
than the equal of others, and stood neither by himself nor 
with only two or three about him. But his pre-eminence lay 
in this — that the characteristics attaching to him were pos- 
sessed by him, both in a rare degree severally and at the 
same time in a rare combination. It is because of this that 
he stands out so far from his associates and contemporaries. 
Thus he had a striking power of discipline and government, 



A MEMOIE 3 

as striking perhaps as that of Vaughan. As a source of 
moral inspiration he was scarcely second to Arnold, while as 
a teacher he was much superior to Arnold. He had the 
vigour, the energy, the manly hardihood of Thring. He had 
all the classical scholarship, all the literary delicacy and grace, 
of the present Dr. H. M. Butler. Such a combination of 
characteristics would by itself have produced a very impressive 
personality ; but Edward Bowen's personality was made up 
of more qualities even than these. He possessed many 
interests beyond literature and scholarship, and was more or 
less proficient in the subjects connected with them. He 
was a good astronomer and a fair mathematician. He had a 
wide acquaintance with military history, and knew of the 
Napoleonic period as much, perhaps, as any Englishman 
living. He was enough of a Biblical critic to keep pace 
with most modern discussions upon questions of authorship, 
date, integrity, interpretation. He was a keen politician, 
and deeply interested in all social, and to some extent in all 
ecclesiastical, reforms. He was a song-writer who, in his 
own line, was unequalled. He was a vigorous athlete — 
a splendid walker, a zealous oar, an indefatigable foot- 
ball player, a good cricketer. The 'Times' and 'Daily 
Graphic ' brought each summer morning the interest of 
county scores as well as of Parliamentary debates or of 
foreign telegrams, and he followed the career of some 
batsman or bowler with the same closeness and keen- 
ness as the development of some political or industrial 
question. 

But to these things — sufficiently remarkable by them- 
selves — Edward Bowen added a character of the rarest beauty 
and purity. He was a man of deep lovableness, capable of 
giving to others, and of drawing to himself from others, 
intense affection. He combined simple and unpretending 
goodness with lofty aims and the most exalted idealism. 
His friends turned to him upon any question of morals 
or duty or honour with an assurance that was absolute. 
He was virtually a father confessor to most of his colleagues, 
both old and young. No man, again, ever possessed in a 
higher degree the quality of self-forgetfulness. « Surely,' 

B 2 



4 EDWAED BOWEN 

wrote the present Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, 
immediately after Edward Bowen's death, ' a more gracious, 
brilliant, lovable spirit has rarely been given to the earth, 
as if to suggest that unselfishness does not always imply 
a preliminary struggle.' It has been surmised indeed that 
the ' preliminary struggle ' may perhaps have taken place in 
him also somewhere, somewhen, unnoticed and unknown ; 
but, if that were so, the victory was complete. He was, 
too, deeply and sincerely religious. It was characteristic of 
him to direct in his will that no memorial should be raised 
to him ; it was equally characteristic to make the exception 
that a small cross might be placed at the head of his grave. 
He never, indeed, brought forward his religious feelings into 
the glare of public notice ; but those who knew him really 
well, and who walked in intimacy with him along the even 
tenour of his way, whether at Cambridge or at Harrow, saw 
at times the unmistakable evidences of an intensely spiritual 
nature. His religious life has been picturesquely and aptly 
compared by one, who was almost a life-long friend, 1 to the 
Spanish river the Guadiana, 

which plunges at a certain point in its course below the ground, 
but throws up thereafter to the surface, at one place and at 
another, certain bubbling pools, called by the natives with uncon- 
scious poetry the ' eyes of the Guadiana.' They are only pools, 
but they prove that the stately river is pursuing an uninterrupted 
course below. So was it with the religion of Edward Bowen. 

Once again, there was over all — over scholarship, and 
government, and lessons, and games, and the intercourse of 
personal friendship, and the vigour of life, and the charm of 
loving-kindness — the almost continuous sunshine of his 
humour and gaiety. He was capable of feeling intensely 
sorrow and disappointment — no man more so ; but the signs 
and traces of sorrow and disappointment were, as a rule, 
deliberately and carefully hidden away under a covering 
of reserve which was rarely withdrawn, even before the 
sympathy of attached and intimate friends. Outwardly his 
life was marked by an almost unfailing appreciation of fun 

1 Mr. E. Bosworth Smith, in an article in TJie Harrovian, May 18, 1901. 



A MEMOIE 5 

and merriment and laughter. Indeed, it has been said of 
this characteristic in him that it was this alone which 
rendered possible the extremely strict character of some of 
his discipline ; but there the characteristic was, prominent 
on most occasions ; and he largely received, as he unquestion- 
ably deserved, the benefit of it. 

And all this brilliance, all this breadth of learning, all 
this beauty of character, all this power of rule, all this 
capacity for guiding and inspiring others, all this grandeur of 
example, were given by him with glad and willing whole- 
heartedness to the School with which his name will always 
be connected. Now and again, it is true, his ambitions 
turned away from ' the daily round, the common task,' to 
the House of Commons, and to the attractions which others 
found there. More than once the question of candidature 
was seriously considered in connection with some particular 
constituency. On one occasion he fought during the Easter 
holidays a severely contested election ; but when fate decided 
in each case against him, he was content to go on in his 
calling for the last fifteen or sixteen years of his life with a 
loyalty that was perfect. 

Shall we deem his devotion too narrow 
For gifts so commanding and rare ? 

Enough that his heart was in Harrow, 
And he gave it unquestioning there. 1 

His chief love in life was for Harrow, and we may well 
believe that it was a love which grew and deepened with 
advancing years, as brothers and friends passed away from 
him, and before him « saw the Uncreated.' The supremacy 
of Harrow in his affections and interests was never challenged 
by wife and children, for he was never married. And when, 
at the age of sixty-five, the end suddenly came — just such an 
end as he would, in all probability, have chosen for himself 
— it was the School that found itself in the place of his eldest 
son. Of others, who had in his judgment claims upon him, 
he was indeed generously mindful, but the greater portion 
of his property passed, as was meet and right, to Harrow. 

1 Memorial Verses, by E. W. H. 



6 EDWAED BOWEN 

The privilege of writing the record of such a life is 
obviously one attended by no little difficulty. It is almost, 
if not quite, impossible to give upon paper any adequate 
impression of a personality which was not only out of the 
common, but without its likeness elsewhere. The delicate 
tricks of gesture and expression, the constant flashes of fun, 
the little idiosyncrasies, can no more be written down by the 
biographer than they could in old days have been portrayed 
by the photographer. An old pupil, in an article upon him, 1 
said with not less truth than pathos : 

Bowen cannot be reproduced in writing, any more than he 
will ever be reproduced in the actual world. His great unlike- 
ness to anyone else that ever was, or ever will be, makes the 
special bitterness of this occasion : therein death has its sting, 
and the grave its victory. The tragedy is not, as often in the 
case of other men more famous but more ordinary, that he left a 
great thing undone ; but simply that he has ceased to be. 

A memoir, therefore, which attempts to describe a man 
who was in some ways indescribable, is bound to be in part 
a failure ; and it is no easy task to keep that failure from 
being complete. 

Again, such a life as Edward Bowen's clearly does not 
lend itself to any minute and detailed account. One day was, 
as a rule, much like another. The correspondence was 
generally little more than notes exchanged on school busi- 
ness. No great dramatic incidents will make their way into 
the record. The fortunes of a church, or of an empire, or of 
a large section of the community, will never be felt by the 
reader to be at stake. The story is of the life of one whose 
profession brought him into no situations of national crisis, 
and required of him the solution of none of those problems of 
state which determine the composition of a parliament or 
the fate of a cabinet. But this memoir derives from one 
attribute of Edward Bowen's life a great advantage. It is 
the memoir of a man whose work was not chipped and broken 
into fragments, but was complete and entire. He com- 

1 Mr. G. M. Trevelyan, in The Harrovian, May 18, 1901. Much of the 
article is quoted later on in connection with Edward Bowen's work as a house- 
master 



A MEMOIE ? 

menced his career as a Harrow master at the age of twenty- 
four; and when — 'forty years on' — he fell dead in the 
presence of two intimate friends, on an unfrequented road 
in a beautiful part of the Cote d'Or, he was still a Harrow 
master. The shadow of resignation was, it is true, beginning 
to fall across his path. He had, indeed, not done more than 
intimate, somewhat informally, a wish to give up his house 
and to confine himself to teaching in form ; but for a man 
midway between sixty and seventy there is no long period of 
school-work remaining, even under the most favourable cir- 
cumstances and conditions. And it was the sense of this — 
the recognition that the call of calls did not come in its 
sudden swiftness until all was nearly ' finished ' — which in 
a measure comforted friends and colleagues and old pupils 
when the unexpected news came. If death steps in and 
closes a career only partly developed, its presence is especially 
painful and distressing. But there was no thought of such 
premature intrusion in connection with the death of Edward 
Bowen. The perplexity and mystery which sometimes hang 
like a great cloud over a summons by Providence to another 
world were here wholly absent. The ways of God were 
patent and clear, and needed not that faith should struggle 
with an attempted explanation of them, nor that pious sub- 
mission should take the place of a reasonable understanding. 
In the spring of 1901 Edward Bowen's life-work was rapidly 
drawing to its close. His contribution towards the needs of 
his generation had been obviously paid in full — even ' to the 
uttermost farthing.' And therefore this memoir is the narra- 
tive of a life which was complete ; and there is no need to 
dwell on the manner and degree in which the record gains 
from the fact. 



EDWARD BOWEN 



Edward Ernest Bowen was born on March 30, 183(5, 
being fifteen months junior to his brother Charles, afterwards 
Lord Bowen. His second brother, Frank, was seven 1 
years younger. 1 His father, the Bev. Christopher Bowi n, 
was the eldest representative of an Irish family holding 
property in county Mayo, and was distinguished by many 
of the best characteristics of the Evangelical school of those 
days — devotion, spirituality, a hearty dislike of ecclesiastici^m, 
profound earnestness, unquestionable sincerity. He was also 
very gentle and affectionate, full of sympathy with the trials 
of others, full of compassion for their failures or mistakes. 
Sir Henry Cunningham, in his memoir of Lord Bowen, has 
referred to him as • an excellent reader, whose children en- 
joyed no greater treat than to lie on the hearthrug and listen 
to his rendering of one of Shakespeare's plays.' He was, too, 
one whose able mind remained fresh and active with advanc- 
ing years. When he was quite an old man he read ' The 
Kernel and the Husk,' and wrote, in a private letter to B 
young clergyman who was troubled by the book, a cartful 
and clear criticism of it. It may be added, in view of the 
striking poetical gifts of his two elder sons, that he was a 
somewhat copious writer of verses, both humorous and 
sentimental — verses which were at times of no mean order. 
He died on the Biviera in 1890. Edward Bowen's mother 
survived him and all her three sons. She was a daughter of 
Sir Bichard and Lady Steele ; the former being an Irish 
baronet, and the latter a daughter of Count d' Alton. From 

1 He died in early manhood. He was inferior in scholarship to his 
brothers, though not, perhaps, in athletic capacities, for he was captain of the 
Winchester eleven. Never, perhaps, has any man been more dearly loved by 
relations and friends than he. 



A MEMOIR 9 

their mother the sons doubtless gained their tenacity of 
purpose and strength of will — qualities which she inherited 
in no small measure from Lady Steele ; while she also gave 
to them what was, in her younger and happier days, her 
bright and merry disposition. She held the religious views 
of her husband with uncompromising consistency, possessing 
with him all that was best and most worth having in that 
type of thought and Biblical interpretation. She died at the 
age of ninety-four, having outlived her son Edward less than 
twelve months. 

Edward Bo wen came, therefore, from a home which was 
full of the atmosphere of Evangelicalism. It might well 
have been the case that spiritual excitement and even 
distress should be connected with his education ; but the 
religious influence of father and mother was, though con- 
tinuous and persistent, quiet and sensible, and was wholly 
free from any traces of the more painful Calvinistic spirit. 
From that influence Edward Bo wen never altogether cut 
himself adrift. He was, it is true, in the days of his man- 
hood, widely separated from Evangelical orthodoxy ; and 
this change of religious position must no doubt have been the 
cause of sincere regret to those to whom Evangelicalism was 
especially dear and important ; but there always remained 
between him and his father some bond of religious sympathy, 
and the younger man would sing hymns with the elder long 
after any actual intercommunion in doctrinal ideas and 
beliefs had become difficult or impossible. There is a story 
told of Edward Bowen's childhood, which, though very 
trivial, illustrates in some slight degree both his own early 
conscientiousness and the religious character of the home. 
He was found one Sunday afternoon, either in the school- 
room or in the nursery, with a portion of the room carefully 
marked off with a piece of string. He gave as his reason 
that he desired to keep himself from the temptation of look- 
ing out of the window. Even in these early years the 
unselfishness of his character came out. If he and his 
elder brother ever quarrelled in the nursery and required 
punishment, he would offer — his mother writes — to bear it 
for both. 



10 EDWAED BOWEN 

The two brothers left home while still quite young — 
nine and ten years of age respectively. MJtB. B0W6D whs in 
ill health, and it was in consequence thought better to send 
the boys to an establishment at Lille. Here fchey stayed for 
twelve months, but were not, it would seem, very happy, and 
it is plain from a letter which Charles Bowen wrote hoim' th;it 
they were much overworked — ' We have ten hours of lessons 
in the day.' Some very brief reminiscences of that time of 
exile, contributed by Edward Bowen to the memoir of hifl 
brother, show how advanced the two children were in their 
English reading. ' Our books were few, but very well read. 
Two volumes of Johnson's complete works were 
treasure, and the " Eambler " and "Idler;" of course all 
Scott, and as much Shakespeare and Spenser as [we] could 
understand.' l On their return to England they went together 
to a good day-school in South London, where Mr. Christopher 
Bowen had charge of a district. Here they were v 
taught, but they had to leave when their parents went bo 
live at Blackheath, the mother's health being still unsatis- 
factory and not permitting her to continue in the noisy and 
narrow streets of Southwark. At Blackheath the two boys 
went to a proprietary school kept by the Bev. E. J. Selwyn, 
father of the present headmaster of Uppingham. Edward 
Bowen afterwards, when examining his old school, wrote of 
its chief in the report which he drew up : 

You will allow me, in conclusion, to express my sincere wish 
for the continued prosperity of the school, which it has been 
no small satisfaction to revisit as examiner, and to pert 
flourishing under the auspices of the headmaster, to whom I 
myself owe the greatest and most important part of my own 
classical education. 

The two boys certainly did as well as possible under his 
supervision and guidance, eventually out-distancing all their 
competitors ; and it seems to have been largely, if not 
entirely, due to this lack of serious competition that their 
withdrawal took place, Mr. Selwyn himself recommending 
it in a call that he paid to their mother. • My dear Mrs. 

1 Lord Bowen by Sir H. Cunningham, p. 10. 



A MEMOIR 11 

Bowen, you must take your boys away from Blackheath.' 
< I hope,' she replied, a little startled, ' they have not mis- 
behaved themselves.' « Quite the reverse,' was the answer ; 
' they are far ahead of the school and give the other boys no 
chance. They would require a wheel-barrow to carry away 
their prizes.' These days together at Blackheath lasted 
from 1846 to 1850. Of Edward Bowen, during that period, 
an old schoolfellow x writes : 

Certainly through all that time he was the best-beloved boy in 
the school. So sweet and unassuming was his disposition that, 
though in each successive form he was facile princeps, albeit 
junior to most, no one ever begrudged him his position. His 
readiness to help ' lame dogs ' was unfailing. His temper was so 
naturally amiable, or so completely under control, that I feel sure 
no one ever saw him ruffled or striking an angry blow. Yet he 
was a manly boy, always taking his share of knocks right cheer- 
fully. I do not think he reached the First Eleven, but he was 
good at games ; though it was left for Cambridge and Harrow to 
carry him on to ' Excellent.' I left school in 1850. That neither 
he nor I up to that time got into the Sixth was simply due to the 
fact that our elder brothers were there ; and it was then judged 
better to keep brothers apart, though in this case there was no 
fear of either of the juniors surpassing his senior. His preference 
was always for boys of gentlemanly tone and pure mind, and he 
got into no scrapes. 

Mr. Selwyn's own personal testimonial, written by him 
at the close of these school-days, need not be quoted in full ; 
but in it he speaks of his pupil's ' high moral worth,' of his 
talent, which is ' very far indeed above the average,' of his 
surprising skill and accuracy, of ' his devotion to his studies,' 
and ends : 

I have every confidence in saying that if his health be spared, 
under God's blessing, he will give to all those under whose care 
he may come from time to time such satisfaction as they do not 
commonly receive from a pupil. For myself, I may say that, 
except Edward Bowen's elder brother, Charles, who is carrying 
all before him at Eugby, I never had such a pupil, and scarcely 
expect to meet ever with his superior. 

1 Kev. A. Wood, Rector of Great Ponton, near Grantham. 



12 EDWARD BOWEN 

In the latter part of 1850, the two brothers were sepa- 
rated ; nor did their educational careers join again at any 
subsequent period. The elder went, late in that year, to 
Rugby, and afterwards to Balliol College, Oxford ; while the 
younger, after remaining some twelve months longer at 
Blackheath, passed in the Lent Term of 1852 to King's 
College, London ; and thence in the autumn of 1854 to 
Trinity College, Cambridge. 

Unfortunately no personal reminiscences of him by fellow - 
students are available in connection with the years which he 
spent at King's College, London. It is known, however, 
that his health was not always satisfactory ; and there 
appears to have been, at one time, some reason for anxiety 
as to the state of his lungs — an anxiety for which there was 
still further cause later on. His career, none the less, was a 
brilliant one. The year of his entrance he obtained the 
prize for Latin verses ; and he repeated the triumph in 1853 
and 1854. It is presumably to this last year that the story 
belongs of his sending in three different compositions under 
different mottoes, and of each being adjudged worthy of the 
prize. In that year, too, he obtained the senior classical 
scholarship, as well as the Plumptre prizes for original 
English verse and for translation. He also gained the 
London University Exhibition, and later on, while a 
Cambridge undergraduate, the Bachelorship. In 1861, after 
his brilliant career at Trinity was concluded, he was elected 
a Fellow of King's College, and retained his Fellowship until 
his death. 

It was at King's College that he first began to show his 
power of English composition. There had been a magazine 
at Blackheath, but he appears to have taken little or no 
part in it. To the ' King's College Magazine,' however, he 
contributed on several occasions and with much success. 
Examples of his work at this period will be read with interest 
by those who knew him in later years. 4 They exhibit,' writes 
a correspondent, 1 ' his varied powers in the bud, and are 

1 Rev. Andrew Wood, with whom during this period Edward Bowen kept up 
a continuous and intimate correspondence, but who was unfortunately no 
longer a fellow-student. 



A MEMOIR 13 

not unworthy of the future author of " The Eighteenth 
Middlesex " and the " Harrow Songs," for which I predict 
an immortality.' 

' The Ballad of Oroetes,' by ' Publi[c]us Stultus Menti- 
tor,' has attached to it in the original manuscript, though not 
in the printed version, a laudatory notice from ' Eomana 
Tempora,' in which, however, it is pointed out (no doubt 
with truth) that the author is guilty of an anachronism in 
making his characters now and then talk Latin. The 
Ballad, in its entirety, is too long for insertion ; but quota- 
tions may be extracted which will give the reader an adequate 
idea of the merry gaiety, as well as of the cleverness, of the 
whole. 

Oroetes — so runs the plot — wishes to be tyrant of Sardis, 
but cannot obtain his desires. 

Oroetes lounged on his sofa one day, 

Sucking an orange and sipping cafe ; 

For his chief occupation (excepting in war, 

And kicking and thumping his slaves, et tout cela) 

"Was oranges, cafe, and then dolce far. 

He had soldiers, and horses, and money had he ; 

He had slaves, he had vassals — in short, a whole lot o' men ; 

And being a kind of a Turk, as you see, 

No wonder at all he reclined on an ottoman. 

But spite of his riches, and fashion, and style, 

The Satrap was very ambitious the while, 

And did nothing but sigh 

The whole day and cry — 
' Mehercle ! This problem confoundedly hard is : 
What on earth shall I do to be tyrant of Sardis ? ' 

An interlude follows in which a visitor calls, and Oroetes 
takes the opportunity of speaking of his hatred of one 
Polycrates, the ruler of Samos. 

' I've been so upset. That Polycrates there 

Has insulted my herald.' 'What? Who? How? When? 

Where ? ' 
' I just sent my herald to ask him to dinner, 
And meet a few friends ; when, with very bad grace, 
And turning about with a shrug, the old sinner 
Presented — the very reverse of his face ! ' 



14 EDWARD BOWEN 

1 Mecastor ! why, you 

Don't mean it ! ' 'I do.' 
' Well, all that I say is, 
I'd take him.' ' Quid ais ? ' 
' If I only were you, it's what I wouldn't stand ; 
I'd take Samoa at once. The man cannot defend her.' 
Orcetea on this put his head on his hand, 
His hand on his knee, and his knee on the fender, 
And said not a word, but stared straight at the fire ; 
His visitor then thought it time to retire. 

The results of Oroetes' meditations are found in an invita- 
tion to Poly crates to come and visit him, the proposed object 
being an inspection of a box of Australian gold just received 
from the diggings. Polycrates accepts the invitation ' as 
careless as Topsy.' [' An amusing character,' explains a 
footnote, ' in a popular romance, " Patrui Thomasii Casa," 
which had lately appeared at Eonie.'] 

When he came to the shore 

To Oroetes, before 
They had time to shake hands, he began to harangue him 

On the price of the gold ; 

But Oroetes just told 
A few of his servants to take him, and hang him. 

Oh ! how he did cry, 

' Eheu ! v(B milii ! 
You horrible rascal ! you son of a Jew ! 
You man of three letters ! you carnufex, you ! 
Oh, please, go away ! oh ! hullabaloo ! ' 
But with all his loud clamour he could not prevent em, 
So they took him, and left him there collo pendentem. 

Seven years pass, and the curtain again rises upon 
Oroetes. 

Oroetes lounged on his sofa one day, 

Sucking an orange and sipping cafe — 

Seven long years had passed away, 

And his hair had changed from black to grey, 

And his whole appearance was quite passe. 

His visage was sour as gooseberry wine ; 

From his face tcmpus edax had taken the shine ; 



A MEMOIE 15 

His eyes, too, were sanguine et igne suffecti, 
And he hadn't, in fact, the mens conscia recti. 
To be tyrant was nevertheless his endeavour, 
For crafty he was, and ambitious as ever. 

He, however, is not destined to succeed. He kills 
another rival, and is called to account by Darius, who 'sends 
a messenger to him to demand the money found on his 
victim. The messenger is first < despatched ' by Oroetes with 
fair words, but is immediately afterwards ' despatched ' in 
another sense, and Darius determines to avenge the murder 
of his agent, and • sets out to do so. Sardis is taken, and 
Oroetes, in attempting to escape, is killed by a slave whom 
he had often ill treated. 

Moeal 

There's a moral in everything under the sun, 

So I'll just, if you please, tell you mine and have done : 

You may learn from this story of cruel Oroetes 

That by alterum Icedens, te ipsum tu Icedes ; 

But the lesson I wish you to take most to heart is, 

Mind you never attempt to be tyrant of Sardis. 

Allusion has been made to Edward Bowen's success 
in Latin verses ; and another of his contributions to the 
Magazine is upon this subject, being entitled, ' Modern Latin 
Poetry.' The age of the writer (seventeen) must, as before, 
be remembered in reading the essay, though its workmanship 
would undoubtedly have done credit to an older and riper 
scholar, and manifests on the part of the youthful author a 
close acquaintance with a branch of literature of which, as 
an almost invariable rule, boys and even undergraduates, 
although they may have high classical attainments, are 
wholly ignorant. 

He begins by dividing Latin verse-writing since the 
classical age 

into three eras, the first comprehending Calpurnius, Avienus 
and the other writers until the general darkness consequent upon 
the fall of Borne ; the next, those of the Middle Ages, when men 



16 EDWAED BOWEN 

wrote about themselves and began epic poems ; the third, which 
we may more appropriately call the period of modern Latin 
poetry, commences at, or soon after, the Eeformation, which 
preceded a revival, as of other arts, so also of that of which we 
are speaking. 

It is with this last epoch that his article deals, and he 
takes as its representatives Milton, Gray, Addison, and 
Bourne, ' whose writings present such peculiarities of style 
as may enable us to compare them together.' The greater 
portion of his remarks upon each may be quoted, as showing 
his striking capacity for literary appreciation and criticism 
even at this comparatively early age. 

The Latin poems of Milton which have been handed down to 
us consist of one book of Elegies, one of Epigrams, and a ' Sil- 
varum Liber.' Of these, the Epigrams, though the fifth and sixth 
are well written, will hardly repay a continuous perusal. We 
confine our notice, therefore, to the Elegies and the ' Silvarum.' 
In the former, the chief thing aimed at appears to have been neat- 
ness. There is no greatness, though some originality, of thought ; 
but the verses flow with an ease and gracefulness which are now 
not often attained. We are afraid there is a false quantity here 
and there; but false quantities can be pardoned when we have 
such beautiful lines as those to Charles Deodati, an intimate 
friend of the author ; indeed, the whole book is written with a 
taste and polish which entirely do away with the unpleasant 
halting generally occasioned by the elegiac couplet. The 'Sil- 
varum Liber ' opens with a Greek translation, which, though it 
ought not properly to come under our notice at present, is, we 
cannot refrain from saying, one of the most successful productions 
of its kind that we have ever met with. Of the poems themselves, 
we may safely say that they equal the Elegies in facility of ex- 
pression, and surpass them in greatness of thought. There are 
one or two which form an exception to this standard ; but, on the 
whole, they present as faultless a collection as we possess. The 
three best are the poem on the 5th of November, which, however, 
is too historical to be thoroughly pleasing ; the Epitaph of Damon, 
which almost, if not quite, equals Virgil's Eclogues ; and, best of 
all, the magnificent address, ' Ad Patrem,' which we have no hesi- 
tation in calling the greatest of modern Latin poems. The 
epilogue to this and to the Elegies are not to be surpassed by 
ancient or modern writers. Altogether, these writings of Milton 



A MEMOIE 17 

breathe such a spirit of classicality — though he was no plagiarist 
— that we feel inclined to rank their author above Gray and 
Addison, who, we think, hold the next place. Milton ivas a poet 
under Cromwell ; he would have been one under Augustus. 

The ' Poemata ' of Gray form a striking contrast to his 
English effusions : the latter are full of wildness, and in. some 
parts even of majesty : of the former the chief characteristic is 
tameness, though the lines are not ungraceful. We are told, too, 
that when publishing his English poems, Gray only produced the 
very best pieces of all that he had written ; in the Latin poems, 
on the other hand, he seems to have brought out every line that he 
had written, even printing single stanzas by themselves. These 
works all display a great amount of scholarship ; he seems to 
have been rather proud of being able to imitate, and here and 
there actually to copy, Virgil in whole lines and sentences. 
Everything that he has written shows extensive classical reading, 
and the fragment of his Didactic Poem shows that he had studied 
Lucretius to some purpose ; but the piece by which he ought 
fairly to be judged is his ' hymeneal ' on the marriage of the 
Prince of Wales. This is written in first-rate style, but expressed 
in by no means original Latin. 

We will not make any long stay with Addison, for the opinion 
we have formed of him is somewhat different from that commonly 
entertained. He seems to produce a grand idea, though not 
frequently — or a beautiful line, which often occurs — merely for 
the purpose of spoiling it by some tasteless allusion or expression 
shocking to classical ears. We are actually astonished at a man 
who could write such really good poetry as parts of ' William III.' 
and then finish a hexameter with ' picturarum vulgus inane.' This 
characteristic chiefly appears in the poems on the picture of the 
Resurrection, and that on a Puppet-show. His Alcaic Odes are 
his best compositions ; it is somewhat singular that in that 
addressed to Dr. Burnett, we can trace an idea or expression out 
of Horace in every stanza. 

Lastly, we come to Vincent Bourne, prince of translators. His 
original poems, though all very good, are not the department in 
which he chiefly shines : to his translations from the English we 
can apply no less an epithet than exquisite. His mode of render- 
ing even the most difficult of Pope's verses is truly admirable, 
being perfectly classical, and, at the same time, perfectly original 
in language. We should strongly recommend all who are in the 
habit of writing Latin verse to read ' The Wish ' and ' Chloe 

c 



18 EDWARD BOWEN 

Hunting : ' we are convinced that it will be as useful as an hour's 
study of Ovid. It is impossible to praise too highly the neatness 
and elegance with which these — indeed, all his translations — arc 
executed. They reflect the highest honour on the Westminster 
School and his own diligence ; though, indeed, such a wonderful 
facility of translation could never have been taught. In ti 
days translation is deemed as important a feature of Latin poetry 
as original writing ; and Vincent Bourne is the greatest of trans- 
lators, as Milton is of 'originals.' We must acknowledge that the 
latter is the higher style of the two : still, we would fearlessly ask, 
what can be more beautiful than the following extract, with which 
we shall conclude ; hoping that this, our only quotation out of so 
rich a field, will be excused : 

' Ah me ! the blooming pride of May 

And that of beauty are but one ; 
At noon both flourish, bright and gay, 
Both fade at evening, pale and gone.' 

' Hei mihi ! quod floret languetque superbia Maii, 
Floret idem formsB gloria, languet idem ; 
Utraque mane vigens placidumque efc dulce rubescit, 
Utraque marcescit vespere, pallet, abit.' 

We wish we had space to give more ; but every word of his 
poems deserves diligent attention, and, reader — at least one 
perusal. 

Another essay sent to the 'King's College Magazine,' 
and published early in 1854, two months after that on 
' Modern Latin Poetry,' was an interesting and unconven- 
tional study of the character and motives of Pontius Pilate. 
It is not necessary in quoting the article of a gifted boy to 
point out, much less to dwell upon, its defects and fail up 
Such a composition is obviously not to be treated as the 
product of a full-grown mind, but as the evidence of ability to 
be brought to its full stature in coming years ; and, in reading 
it, originality of thought and independence of judgment will 
be counted as of far more value under the circumstam •• 
than mature historical soundness. Edward Bowen when 1 
wrote 'The Procurator' would, had he been at a public 
school, have been a Sixth Form boy ; and it is as the work 
of a Sixth Form boy that this ' study in character' must be 
looked at and judged. 



A MEMOIE 19 

The intentions and conduct of Pilate are, the writer 
of the essay thinks, open to another than the traditional 
interpretation. That there should have been years of 
error in connection with him is only analogous to the 
long-lived historical mistakes which have been made in 
connection with other names. ' We are now somewhat 
staggered in our belief that Eichard III, was the con- 
summate villain that Shakespeare has represented 'him ; 
Niebuhr has shown us that the estimate that we have 
formed of Eegulus is purely ideal ; and there is, we believe, 
no scholar of the present day who would venture to accumu- 
late upon the Sophists the scorn and reprobation of which 
they have been for centuries the victims.' Accordingly he 
is of opinion — and sets out to justify it in detail — that Pilate 
may in his turn reasonably be judged more mercifully and 
leniently than the world has hitherto consented to judge him, 
and that such an interpretation of his mind and nature is 
possible as leads not, indeed, to a complete acquittal, but to 
a verdict far more sympathetic than that which is customary 
and traditional. 

Why may not Pontius Pilate have been an enthusiastic young 
Epicurean, full of the vigour and happiness of life, and with a 
sublime perception of the beauty of virtue ; not one of those 
degenerate Epicureans who brought the name into merited con- 
tempt, but a devoted follower of the principles of his great master ? 
Perhaps he had lately bade adieu, with pleasure, to the corruption 
of the metropolis, where his eyes must have been offended with 
the daily scenes of vice, and his ears annoyed by the frivolous 
dissertations on metaphysics. Perhaps he now had hoped to find 
this dull province a haven where his sense of moral beauty should 
be indulged with the Contentment and quiet of a situation remote 
from the cares of Eome, and his search for pure pleasure should 
be free from vexatious struggles to attain to more than human 
science. 

Let us suppose this view of the character of Pontius Pilate to 
be correct ; his conduct will then be sufficiently explained. We 
will consider the narrative minutely. It appears that at first he 
was unwilling to conduct the trial at all. He was naturally 
averse to look upon human misery ; the sight of the culprit 

c 2 



20 EDWARD BOWEN 

struggling in the meshes of the law, and then led triumphantly 
away to punishment, had no charms for him : the morbid excite- 
ment of such a scene was little in accordance with the pure 
enjoyment of life. Another governor would never have refused a 
criminal charge ; a Verres would have extorted money from the 
friends of the accused ; a Piso would have exulted in the death- 
agonies of the victim. Pilate proceeded with the trial by a course 
of regular examination. It was not long before the acute judg- 
ment of the procurator discovered the real character of him with 
whom he had to deal. This was no real culprit ; that thoughtful 
and melancholy brow was never seen on a Barabbas : ' I find no 
fault in this man.' The prevailing feeling in his mind must have 
been one not so much of indifference as of pity — pity that a man 
born, like others, to the enjoyment of the world should sacrifice 
this enjoyment to promote, without any apparent cause, his own 
peculiar opinions, and that one who, in his eyes, should have been 
too wise to aim at uncertain science should find himself already 
master of truth ! Here is a prisoner, a man of no ordinary mould, 
who professes to be, not a follower after, but one who has actually 
reached, the ends of science ! For this purpose has he come into 
the world, to be a witness to the truth ! It cannot be ; none but 
a God could attain to the truth. The thought of years, the con- 
viction acquired by profound mental exertion, was summed up in 
that sceptical exclamation, ' What is truth ? ' The idea of knowing, 
without discovering, was too sublime for a follower even of Epi- 
curus. And yet his was no great error, for the faith of the 
prisoner was not opposed to the philosophy of the judge ; and 
the mission of that prisoner was to show the world that Epicurus 
was right — to break down the barriers of that metaphysical 
speculation against which he and his followers had struggled, and 
to bring to the knowledge of the world that happiness in which he 
was so ardent a believer. 

In the pages of history another scene is opened to our view. 
Remorse and sorrow have changed the character of the man ; the 
worshipper of pleasure bows beneath the w r eight of mental pain. 
' Be virtuous,' his master had written ; ' be virtuous, and shun 
vice : so shalt thou be happy.' Be virtuous ? He was austere. 
Shun vice? He shunned everything now. And yet was he 
happy ? That voice, once so kind and gentle to all, is now harsh 
and forbidding ; that eye, which had but lately sparkled with the 
gaiety of youth, now seems to frown on the world arouud ; every 
action is characterised by sternness, or even tyranny. The multi- 



A MEMOIR 21 

tude are moved to insurrection ; popular tumults arise ; Pilate is 
recalled and banished. 

We have yet another, a still gloomier, scene to look upon. In 
the depth of misery and the helplessness of exile he has learnt the 
terrible lesson that pure happiness cannot be attained in life. 
For him who had once looked forward to a long and unbroken 
career of enjoyment the past was calamitous, the present insup- 
portable, and the future [full of] despair. What, then, could he 
do but die ? He saw around him the world as smiling and joyful 
as ever, while he himself was broken-hearted. He was unworthy 
of the world; he ought not to sadden it with his presence. It 
was in death alone — to him annihilation — that he could forget his 
former dreams and the sad reality. He must die. Shall Cato, 
the disciple of a creed which ' blasphemed against the divine beauty 
of life,' plunge the steel into his bosom, and he be backward? 
Shall Judas, the hated and despised Jew, seek refuge in death, while 
he clings to life? That shall never be. And the philosopher 
died and left us nothing — but a name to ridicule and to revile. 

Such conjectures, it may be said, are purely imaginary. To 
some extent it may be so; but surely the attempt to rescue a 
name from the obloquy of ages, and to give to history one more 
character on which we may look back not without pleasure, is no 
unworthy effort of the imagination. 

The same issue of the ' King's College Magazine ' has the 
following set of verses. They are of interest, not only 
because of their poetical promise, but as showing, in these 
years of boyhood, the same seriousness and sincerity of 
religious feeling as the beautiful lines entitled ' Shemuel,' 
which came long afterwards from the maturity of his 
spiritual nature. 

WHAT I READ IN THE DEAMA OF LIFE 

I read that in this world of care and pain 
Three children comforted a mother's breast : 

She, loving ever in their hearts to reign, 
They, ever happy in her love to rest. 

Above the clamour of the noisy world, 

Their merry laugh was wont supreme to reign ; 

And when the children died, their parting sigh, 
'Twas said, had more of happiness than pain. 



22 EDWARD BOWEN 

She sorrowed not; but welcomed, as she heard, 
The kindly Voice that called them from her side ; 

And when the summer leaves once more appeared, 
The mother bowed her head, and — smiling — died. 

'Tis soon and simply told ; yet though the tale 

Be but the solace of an idle hour, 
These are the triumphs that exalt our world, 

And rob the grave of victory and power. 

'Tis thus we gather, in our earthly clime, 
Some tokens of the Life that cannot die, 

And trace, amid the broken waves of Time, 
A floating image of Eternity. 



It was in the autumn of 1854 that Edward Bowen 
went up to Trinity College, Cambridge. There is extant a 
small photograph of him, which comes apparently from the 
first days of his University life ; and the personality which it 
exhibits is a very striking one. It shows a well-formed 
head, with an intellectual forehead and thick black hair 
coming down over the ears. The face is clean -shaved, and, 
though the features fall short of actual beauty, they show 
clearly enough the delicacy and refinement, as well as the 
freshness and purity, of the nature of which they are the 
visible expression. The figure was then, as always, thin 
and wiry ; and there were then, as always, the signs of 
physical vigour and intellectual alertness. He is dressed 
in the ordinary garb of the period — a long frock coat and a 
large thick tie — and he wears a top-hat. 

At Cambridge several names were • writ large ' on his 
list of friendships, never again to be removed from it. 
With his cousin Frank Synge, afterwards one of the 
Chief Inspectors of Schools, he was already on intimate 
terms, but the intimacy now deepened into lasting affec- 
tion. Another close comrade, and in after years another 
close friend, was Sir Charles Elliott, a distant connection, 
who writes of the walks up and down the cloisters of 



A MEMOIE 23 

Trinity which he and Edward Bo wen took many a time 
together in their undergraduate days, discussing eagerly all 
manners and kinds of social reform. Edward Bowen had 
at this time some strong Conservative tendencies, but he had 
also a large dash of that Eadicalism with which he after- 
wards definitely associated himself. The survivor vividly 
remembers the extraordinary impression which his friend 
made on him, and how he thought that the various evils of 
this perplexing, maddening world, would assuredly disappear 
as Edward Bowen came to the front. Sir Charles Elliott 
applies to his feeling about him the lines from Browning's 
' Waring : ' 

Having first within his ken 
What a man might do with men : 
And far too glad, in the even-glow, 
To mix with the world he meant to take 
Into his hand, he told you, so — 
And out of it his world to make, 
To contract and to expand 
As he shut or oped his hand. 

Another most dearly loved friend was William Saumarez 
Smith, now (1902) Archbishop of Sydney, who writes of him : 
' Strenuus etfortis are the epithets that become the description 
of his character as I knew it; and the tenderness and warmth 
of affection which accompanied those "strong" qualities are 
very pleasant to remember, as I look back gratefully to those 
early days.' There are fortunately extant some letters from 
Edward Bowen to his friend — dating partly from their time 
together at Cambridge and partly from a subsequent period 
— and they are full of charm and interest. Not only do they 
contain evidence of the more superficial characteristics of 
the writer's nature, but they testify to the mutual religious 
feeling which bound the two young lives to one another. 
The passages which give expression to these thoughts come 
only here and there ; they are just thrown in, nothing more ; 
there are no laboured or unnatural efforts after pious 
reflections and maxims ; but the casual unpremeditated 
references to spiritual longings and hopes speak far more 



24 EDWARD 130WEN 

eloquently of Christian earnestness and endeavour than 
would many pages of elaborated sentiment. One of these 
letters was written at the opening of 185G, and therefore 
comes from Edward Bowen's second year as an under- 
graduate. A good deal of it may be quoted : 

St. Thomas'B Rectory, Winchester : Jan. 3, 1856. 

Dear Willie, — Having just finished three books of Thucydides, 
I may as well begin a letter to you before I proceed with 
iEschylus' ' Choephoroe.' I am rather unhappy because I have no 
books here, and it hardly pays to begin Greek plays "with no notes 
and only that miserable translation. . . . The fresh air here : 
fresh air anywhere else : : old court : is to new. I was on the eve 
of ordering a velocipede the other day from John Howes, and 
going up on it and persuading you to join me at London on 
another, but gave it up — I forget why. I must tiy and forget 
velocipede and all other excursions henceforward if possible till 
after the grind. . . . Have you seen Caird's [Rev. James] sermon 
published by order of her Majesty ? ' I saw a review and extracts 
in the ' Times,' which seemed very good. There is a review of 
Jowett in the ' Quarterly.' 

2 I can't work, I keep reading your letter which came this 
morning. . . . Your letters always come and awake me, which is 
pleasant to think of when going to bed. My father comes into 

the room and says, ' Get up, it's almost ; we're just going to 

breakfast ; here's a letter for you,' which is effectual. I conceal 
the time for obvious reasons, my hours being not so good quite as 
at Trinity. Curious that we should both have liked Caird's 
sermon — that is, as far as regards you, for I haven't read it yet. 
I can't quite see the force of your observation about going up. 
We agreed to go up together, and I will whether you will or not. 
My thoughts run much more upon the bright side of the scholar- 
ship chances, than upon the dark, which is on the whole perhaps 
the pleasantest course. I wish I could begin the year with more 
hopes of serving God better and believing [in] Him more. It 
seems as if I had so much yet to learn, that by the time I have 
learnt it, half the time of using it and working upon it will be 
gone. I can only fall back upon the dim trust that the result of 
all will be good. . . . You say you read Macaulay, and do not 

1 A famous sermon by the late Principal Caird on Religion in Common 
Life. 

2 What follows is written a day or two later. 



A MEMOIR 25 

mention ' David Copperfield.' I decline entirely making mathe- 
matical studies the subject of my thoughts when I am away 
from you ; and beg you will do the same when I am not near you. 
Hint to W. that you really do believe after all M. wears a 
wig. It is amusing to see the indignation with which he rejects 
the idea. It was cunning of M. coming and influencing the 
parental mind. What does your father think of him? It is 
pleasant to be able to shut up for the evening with ' Good night, 
Willie.' 

A second letter, which also will be read with interest, is 
dated some twelve months later. It was sent to his friend 
on the latter's coming of age. There is in it the same com- 
bination of genuinefun and religious sentiment : 

[January 1857.] 
As your birthday is on Wednesday, and I shall not have 
a moment of time again till then, I send now my congratulations, 
which are accompanied with many wishes of further returns of the 
day, ' till we all come in the unity of one Spirit and the knowledge 
of the Lord to a perfect man ' — to which I do hope we may get 
nearer and nearer every year. I hope you will manage to get over 
the few remaining days of ' infancy ' with as much equanimity 
as the occasion allows, and make a judicious use of the privilege 
of signing your name — for, as somebody remarked on a similar 
occasion, it's something more than mere playing at vingt-et-un 
now. I shall feel awfully small when we go back again. By the 
way, I am doing that immediately ; my next three days being spent 
in — Monday, going to see sick friend twelve miles off, and back, 
all day ; Tuesday, go to London in the morning, sleep at Donne's ; 
and go on Wednesday to a kind of general Nicene Council of 
clergymen, who are going to hold a kind of [ ? ] somewhere in 
London, and Eev. E. B. Elliott opens the debate. Wednesday, to 
Cambridge ; can I do anything for you ? . . . You seem to 
have been doing an immense quantity of reading ; all the Iliad and 
Odyssey with some Juvenal and Virgil thrown in is rather well. I 
thought I had been industrious, but I haven't done half that. I have 
sat down to (a) Aristotle and (/?) Plato on two separate occasions ; 
the result of (a) was one page, of (/?) an imperceptibly small 
quantity. By the way, what nonsense you do talk about Timothy 
and Titus. Why, we did Titus long ago — which shows you must 
have shirked it ; and I know I went on properly about 2 Timothy. 
The extra verse shall be duly inserted to-morrow. . . . My dear 



26 EDWARD BOWEN 

Willie, I hope you may find life as happy after twenty-one as 
before, and be still, as 1 Peter says, iv Swdfiet 9tov <ppovpoi'/Atvo<; th 
crwrrjptav eToifxrjv a-rroKa\v(p6i]vai — at SOme time 01" Other. 

Another who went up with Edward Bowen was Edmnn.i 
Fisher, afterwards first Archdeacon of Southwark. He 
came from Rugby, where he had been head of the School, 
with Charles Bowen second to him. With him the most 
intimate comradeship at once began, and the friendship 
lasted unimpaired till — after many years — death intervened. 
There are some humorous lines addressed by Edward 
Bowen to him, on the occasion of an unfortunate incident 
in his University career. It seems that Fisher arrived at 
Trinity with his luggage in the middle of the night, but was 
unable to make the porter hear, with the result that he was 
left outside on the pavement for something over two hooiB. 
The following poem was thereupon addressed to him by his 
friend : 

ON AN EXTERNAL VIEW 
OP TRINITY COLLEGE BY E. H. FISHER, ESQ. 

For it is plain that he who is outside is differently situated from him who 
is within. — Arabian Proverb. 

What, Fisher, what, Fisher, was the happy spot, Fisher, 
Where you chose at midnight to repose your weary head, 

When the porter, slowly nodding, actually forgot, Fisher, 
Outside wasn't Paradise, and inside wasn't bed ? 

Ha, Fisher ! Ha, Fisher ! down from off the car, Fisher, 

The box with nails, and carpet bag, and hat box, did you bring, 

With a hungry, Bashibazouk sort of movement, only — Ah, Fisher ! 
To get the bell, and — yes, and then, to find it wouldn't ring ! 

We, Fisher, we, Fisher, easily can see, Fisher, 

How nominative changed into accusative with you, 

And at last when hoarse with shouting and when out of breath at 
three, Fisher, 
The vocative was wanting, and the Latin Grammar true. 

Rough Fisher, tough Fisher, did they sniff and snuff, Fisher, 
The little dogs about you while a-waiting for the porter '.' 

And is it pleasant listening to the crow and the chough, Fisher, 
And is it pleasant listening for two hours and a quarter ? 



A MEMOIE 27 

Poor Fisher, poor Fisher, on the earthy floor, Fisher, 

Did you woo uneasy slumber, or upon the box with nails, 

Or spread-eagle-wise across the carpet bag against the door, Fisher, 
Or — but we stop, for hat boxes, and dead men, tell no tales. 

Fisher ! Fisher ! could the bobby know, Fisher, 
The position wasn't choice, but sheer necessity alone ? 

How can you use such language about A Twenty-two, Fisher, 
If in doubt of your sobriety he appealed to Twenty-one ? 

Yes, Fisher, yes, Fisher, nobody could guess, Fisher, 
Vy you lazed a blockin' up the thoroughfare was queer : 

Other youths ere now of dissimilar excess, Fisher, 
Have done so too, but you of pure despair, and they of beer. 

Eh, Fisher ? eh, Fisher ? Bobbies went away, Fisher, 
So did dogs, and when the gate was opened you got in it ; 

But wasn't it the painfullest of courtesies to say, Fisher, 

no — — only — never mind — yes — nothing— just a minute ? 

Another friend was J. S. Thomas, afterwards the well- 
known Assistant Master and Bursar at Marlborough. He 
held a prominent place in Edward Bowen's memories 
of Cambridge. 

How well (the latter writes after the death of Mr. Thomas) 

1 remember the Sunday evenings when after chapel we used to go 
off, as was the fashion with some of us then, to hear a sermon, or 
part of one, at Harvey Goodwin's church, and then come back to 
supper at Hensley's rooms, or Palmer's, or Taylor's, or Synge's, 
and talk boating shop till eleven or twelve at night. One glorious 
summer vacation we went a walking tour together in Cornwall ; 
one could hardly have a better companion for such an excursion. 
Three weeks ago, as I talked to him for a few minutes, he seemed 
hardly to have changed in these forty years. 1 

Then, again, there was Augustus Hensley, afterwards the 
Senior Assistant Master at Haileybury. One year junior to 
Edward Bowen was Henry Sidgwick, to whom he was bound 
to the end by ties of affection and intimacy which were never 
snapped nor relaxed. Still more junior to him, but at the same 
time overlapping, were the present Sir George Young and 
Sir George Trevelyan, both the close friends of the many 

1 The Marlburicm, November 4, 1897, ' In Memoriam J. S. Thomas.' 



28 EDWAED BOWEN 

remaining years. Another contemporary, who knew him 
then less well, but who was destined to become his colleague 
at Harrow, and to go thence to the Headmastership of 
Haileybury, was James Eobertson. 

It has unfortunately been impossible to obtain many 
detailed reminiscences of this particular period of Edward 
Bowen's life. Strong impressions remain upon the minds 
of those of his University friends who have survived him, 
but they are impressions of generalities and not recollections 
of minutiae. His perfect simplicity, however, his Spartan 
hardihood, his untiring activity, his purity of character, his 
light-heartedness and gaiety, his healthy and innocent enjoy- 
ment of life, together with his deep and incessant interest in 
all political and social questions as well as in those of pure 
scholarship, are characteristics which are vividly recalled 
by the survivors of those days. He would bathe with 
Elliott in the Cam all through the severe ' Crimean winter 
of 1854, breaking the ice, when necessary, to plunge in and 
out again.' He attempted, as a mere matter of watchfulness, 
to sit up two nights running, but failed in the endeavour, as 
was to be expected. On one occasion at least, and perhaps 
on more than one occasion, he horrified the porters at 
Trinity by climbing on the college roofs ; and it was said at 
the time that he was ' convened .' for the performance. 
Edward Bowen, however, never admitted this latter allega- 
tion, and there is no record of the circumstance in the 
College books. His name, too, has been connected by some 
with the perpetration of a practical joke in the shape of the 
publication of some sham lists of the result of a Tripos exa- 
mination ; others, however, have never heard him associated 
with the incident. But he writes to his mother, on one 
occasion, of his experience of a ' Town and Gown ' row, in 
which he was involved one Fifth of November, on coming 
away from an anti-tobacco meeting which ' had resulted 
rather in favour of the herb.' In the fight, in which the 
undergraduates were much outnumbered, he was knocked 
down ; while the following evening he had ' the ignominious 
pleasure of running away from a man with a big stick.' 
As to his general habits, he is said to have been somewhat 



A MEMOIR 29 

Bohemian ; and he doubtless had then, as in after years, a 
complete disregard for appearances and outward comfort. 
It is impossible to think of him at any time of his life as 
prim, neat, precise, much less as luxurious, well-dressed, sur- 
rounded with dainty knick-knacks. But he is remembered 
as a stickler in the observance of all college rules, and as a 
model undergraduate in his regular attendance at lectures 
or chapel ; and it need not be added that he was, from first 
to last, a very hard worker. His first year he lived in 
lodgings ; but in his second he had rooms in the Great 
Court, between the great gate and the chapel. 

We were then (writes a friend l ) able to indulge more freely in 
long symposia in each other's rooms, reading poetry aloud, making 
rhymes in rivalry, or in walking about the cloisters and the Great 
Court, listening to the splash of the fountain and discoursing on 
all heavenly or earthly philosophy. 

A pen-and-ink sketch — he was at this time and for a good 
many years afterwards very fond of making pen-and-ink 
sketches — of his sitting room, in a letter to his mother, still 
survives. In the middle is a large table with books and 
papers scattered about at one end, while at the other the 
tea-things are set out. At the side is a settee, and behind 
the settee an upright bookcase, in the same line as the 
door. On the other side of the central table, against the 
wall, is a small table, with a lamp on it. In the foreground 
is an arm-chair, while in the background, between the two 
windows, stands an upright reading-desk. There are two or 
three pictures on the wall, and there are curtains to the 
windows. 

Edward Bowen ' coached ' at first with Mr. E. Vaughan 
Hawkins, Elliott being his fellow-pupil. But before long 
the present Master of Trinity, Dr. H. M. Butler, came into 
residence as lecturer, and his help was such that the two 
students felt that they could safely dispense with the 
customary services of a private ' coach.' Sir Charles Elliott 
writes of the admiration which Edward Bowen's future 
chief excited in both of them by his own beautiful scholar- 

1 Sir Charles Elliott. 



30 EDWARD BOWEN 

ship. ' I well remember our delight in his lectures, and the 
enthusiasm he awakened in us when, after setting us some 
passage in English poetry or prose to translate, he gave us 
his own divinely felicitous version.' Edward Bo wen was 
not long in obtaining his first University distinction. In 
1855 he and Fisher divided the honour of obtaining the Bell 
Scholarship. In the year following he was elected a scholar 
of Trinity, and obtained other distinctions both in his college 
and in the wider field of University competition. In the 
former he won the theological prize, as well as a prize for a 
first-class in the annual examination, while in the latter he 
was awarded the Carus Greek Testament prize. In connec- 
tion with this memorable success a reminiscence, contributed 
by the old schoolfellow l at Blackheath whose recollections of 
him in those earlier days have already been quoted, is not 
without its interest. It had been the custom for Mr. Selwyn's 
pupils to learn every week the Gospel and the Epistle for the 
Sunday in Greek. Three or four years afterwards Edward 
Bowen agreed with his friend that they would continue 
what they had begun as boys together and would learn all 
St. Paul's Epistles in the Greek, and the resolution was 
conscientiously carried out ; the two constantly writing to 
one another to report progress. The knowledge thus gained 
must have borne its fruit in the examination for the Carus 
prize, as well as in the intimate acquaintance which Edward 
Bowen always showed in later years with these New Testa- 
ment writings. In 1857 he competed for the Craven 
Scholarship, but without success, or indeed any anticipation 
of it. ' Nobody in my year,' he writes to his mother, ' has 
a shadow of a chance of the Craven.' Another unsuccessful 
competition — this time for the Browne Epigrams — brought 
him an opportunity for a characteristic piece of generosity. 

They fell (writes Professor E. C. Clark) somehow to my lot ; 
but one of my compositions contained an error in metre, which 
had, I suppose, escaped the notice of the examiners, as it had my 
own. Bowen was good enough to point this out to me in time to 
prevent my publishing the slip in question, and I think we always 
regarded one another as friends thereafter. 

1 Eev. Andrew Wood. 



A MEMOIE 31 

But the year 1857 was a sufficiently successful one so far 
as college honours went. He again obtained the theological 
prize, and a first-class in the examination, while he also won 
the first English Declamation prize (on Alfred the Great), 
the first Latin Declamation prize (on Judas Maccabaeus), the 
first Reading prize in connection with the services in Chapel, 
and the Dealtry prize for Greek Testament. He was also 
awarded the prize for the best English essay. 

This latter was on ' The Influence of Scenery upon 
National Character,' and is a very able piece of work with 
some excellent passages in it, though it does not represent 
the high-water mark of his Cambridge writing. 1 Character 
is defined by the author to be ' an union of habits all good ; ' 
and the common recommendation of ' a ruling passion ' is 
rejected by him. Great reformers may have had one side 
of their character brought out into relief ; but if they allowed 
themselves to give way to a ruling passion, then, so far as 
they did so, it was to the injury of their moral personality as 
a whole. Therefore ' the true and best study of nature will 
tend to remove ruling passions, will destroy impulsiveness, 
and substitute earnestness.' 

The author then turns somewhat sharply to a considera- 
tion of the influence of natural scenery upon religious 
conceptions — an influence not to be confounded with that of 
the physical peculiarities of the country, which, though at 
times closely resembling it, and not always easily distinguish- 
able from it, is really of a distinct order. He takes as a 
conspicuous example the ideas of hell. In the north, the 
Scandinavian conceived of the place of punishment as a 
region of eternal ice and snow. In the warm south the idea 
took the form of a belief in flames of fire. So, too, 

the Italian with his wide views and clear horizon, or the Arab, 
whose prospect is an unbroken expanse as far as the eye can see, 
loves the hollow valley and limited landscape ; and so Hell with 
him is as wide as Heaven. The mythologist of the North, on the 
other hand, encompassed in mountain and mist, finds every land- 
scape cramped ; and accordingly he imprisons his demons. 

1 The essay is printed in full among the Appendices. 



82 EDWAED BOWEN 

Another influence of scenery is to be found — the writer 
of the essay thinks — in the religious impression created by 
strong varieties in climate. Kapid alternations in this 
respect tend ' to suggest positive and negative poles of 
goodness and power, opposite spirits of good and evil,' 
whereas ' an equable monotony, or at all events a gradual 
variety of climate, is unfavourable to the idea of two oppo- 
site deities.' And he illustrates this by the Brahmin, the 
Hottentots, the tribes toward the extremity of South America 
on the one hand, and by the Peruvian, the Esquimaux, the 
Scandinavian on the other ; while somewhere between the 
two come the ancient German, the Chinese, the Persian, the 
North American Indian. The writer then touches — no more 
— upon the difference between the Greek and Italian scenery 
and the corresponding difference between Italian and Greek 
character ; and then passes on to urge its importance in the 
case of the Jews. 

The nature of the Hebrew mind is one which, more than any 
other, appears to dwell with peculiar delight upon natural scenery, 
and to find a close relation between the event and the scene. 
Whether on the weary desert to the promised conquest, or rioting 
in the fruitfulness of their treasures, and the hope of years fulfilled ; 
whether fighting inch by inch for its progression and recovery, 
with the heroism which lifts the Maccabees to the level of the 
glorious of the earth, or, as now, outcast and wandering and 
hoping again ; through every stage of the history, it has been the 
land that has been uppermost in their thoughts — the ' land flowing 
with milk and honey,' the land as the garden of God, Sion, Sharon, 
Siloa, Lebanon. Did they preserve their ancient allegiance? 
Then no feast more hearty than the first-fruits, no sentiment 
more binding than gratitude for the good land. Did they fall into 
the net of idolatry that surrounded them ? Then under every high 
grove was an altar built. Did they recover, and fight, and 
conquer ? They felt everything in nature on their side and against 
their foes ; the winds and storms helped the people of their choice ; 
'the stars in their courses fought against Sisera.' No lyric of 
praise but is full of the beauties of the land. No prophecy but is 
stored with lessons and warnings derived from them. And no 
study, we may add, is now so popular, and no investigation so 
prolific, as that which connects the thoughts and words, the 



A MEMOIE 33 

history and imagery, of Scripture with the very rocks and valleys 
and springs themselves in Palestine. 

Two questions suggested by what has gone before are 
then brought under some discussion. Firstly, how far is 
civilisation antagonistic to the influence of natural scenery ? 
Secondly, what effect has Christianity upon that influence ? 
The answer given is such as to separate the work of 
Christianity in this respect from the work of civilisation. 
The meaning of scenery to a nation has been found at its 
highest in Jewish life, but the effect of civilisation upon the 
Hebrews would necessarily be in an opposite direction ; since 
their love of scenery was the outcome of ' a high objective 
tendency ' given by the Theocracy ' to the national thoughts,' 
and civilisation works rather through ' subjectivity.' But it is 
different with Christianity. Unlike civilisation, which ' is of 
little help, if it be not rather detrimental, to the understand- 
ing and appreciation of nature,' it takes and consecrates 
those influences which the scene of beauty or grandeur is able 
to exercise. It would be strange were it otherwise, since 
Christianity claims to be an universal religion bringing every- 
thing good within the sphere of its own sanctity. 

The argument then turns from the ancient to the modern 
world, and first of all to the evidence afforded by the southern 
continent of America. 

The forests toward the north of this region terminate, some- 
what abruptly, about the line of the Orinoco Eiver, and are suc- 
ceeded by a totally different species of country. Southward are 
the central savannahs of the Apure and Amazon, the boundless, 
trackless plains, with not an elevation of any kind as far as the 
eye can reach, stretching out in one unbroken landscape for 
thousands of miles ; few rivers, no trees ; but one vast inter- 
minable table-land from the Amazon to Buenos Ayres, from Per- 
nambuco to the Andes. Here there wander the Guachos — 
wandered rather, for civilisation is fast encroaching — the nomad 
shepherds of South America ; savage tribes, indolent in habit, 
though energetic in desires, ferocious, wild, and independent. 
Even their language is energetic, rough, and impassioned. 
Beyond them, in the far South, are the hardy, fierce, and intract- 
able people who inhabit the cold, sterile, pine-clad plains of 
Patagonia. On the north and east of the Orinoco, on the other 

D 



34 EDWAED BOWEN 

hand, there dwell, in fixed and settled homes, nations, mild 
industrious, easily governed, and easily moulded by European 
customs, and devoted to the pursuits of agriculture : the tones of 
their language are mild and melodious, and its nature copious and 
artificial. Now what are the pictures of nature amongst which 
these latter tribes are reared? Do these daily look forth on 
dismal plains, a blank horizon, and wild trackless pampas ? We 
have only to read some traveller's description of the country in 
order to picture to ourselves what the character of the people must 
be. The rivers, clear and rapid, clothed to the very brink with 
luxurious robes of flowers and leaves ; islands hidden from head to 
foot in creepers of exquisite brilliancy and diversity ; cataracts, in 
the foam of which a thousand varying rainbows ever play ; never 
a cloud to dim the burning sky, never a breeze to fan the motion- 
less leaf ; and then the forest, with trees two hundred feet, or more, 
in height ; a growth of underwood so thick that the paths of the 
wild beasts seem like arches cut in a solid masonry of leaves ; 
creepers rising above it nearly to the height of the tallest trees ; a 
rich alluvial mould ; the cries of beasts, and the songs of the 
birds, never for a moment ceasing — one wild exuberance of life 
and vegetation. This is the home of the nations of the North-East. 
Can we wonder that when we come to the very tropics themselves, 
to the very richest of the rich landscape, to New Grenada and the 
Mexican Gulf, there are indolence and luxury, and — in con- 
sequence — oppression and cruelty and crime ? 

Other testimony might be found in the character of the 
Swiss, whose independence, energy, domesticity, cheerfulness, 
are the natural productions of the mountains, lakes, and 
glaciers ; or in Holland, where in view of the dullness and 
sameness and orderliness of the scenery we shall not expect 
to find ' the fire and energy of the French or English 
character — no lofty spirit, no high aspirations — but honesty, 
freedom, religion, system, humanity, love of home.' 

The essayist then alludes to some of the more solemn 
influences of scenery, as realised by the individual character, 
and felt even in moments of fierce temptation : 

The gorgeous colours and indescribable distance of a summer 
sunset, the best and most elevating picture of the infinity which 
in great scenery is not merely a form of speech or custom- 
sanctioned method of abbreviating the expression of a system 
of feelings hard to describe, but a real and almost tangible truth ; 



A MEMOIE 35 

the deep conscience-suggesting silence of the fields and woods and 
this more impressive perhaps than the thunder— there was silence 
in heaven when the final seal was opened ; the wholesome un- 
ostentatious repose, which can hardly exist elsewhere ; the confirma- 
tion we somehow derive from the contemplation of nature of 
that most precious possession of modern philosophy, that of which 
Protestantism is but the expression in theological language, the 
absoluteness of individual existence ; these are some of the things 
which help the mind. And the mind needs the help, and is more- 
over adequate to receive it. For high and good as nature is, our 
souls can nearly reach it even now ; and in this it is true, as it is 
in climbing the hillside— it is good to consider that most, which we 
have just not attained to. And if we penetrate one step deeper 
still into the inner life of nature, another and more mysterious 
sympathy meets us there ; for we learn, and need not be slow to 
believe, that Nature herself, somehow, waits upon man, and that 
upon some glorious future development of his destinies is depen- 
dent the ' earnest expectation of the creature.' 

The writer then points out how, conversely, character will 
influence the creation of scenery, as illustrated in Italy, in 
Holland, or our own country ; but he does not dwell at any 
length upon these points, which have no essential place in 
the fabric of his argument. He concludes with a few words 
of practical application. The study of nature is a corrective 
to the extravagances of the spirit which puts its trust in 
civilisation alone. There is a poetry in nature to be set over 
against the prose of the purely practical tendencies to which 
we are more and more surrendering ourselves. So too there 
is to be found in nature what will assist us in the education 
of the people. There are some things— such as the value of 
simple goodness, or of cultivation of mind— which no books 
can teach. But the beneficent influence of nature comes in 
to help us, if only we would render it more and more possible 
for that influence to make itself felt in the lives of the 
working classes. 

In short, we may reach the character by the eye and ear ; we 
may learn ourselves, and make our people learn, as the child learns 
—first by his picture book, then by the gardens and meadows, then 
by the great world around him. 

The essay has, as will be seen, elements of real beauty 

D 2 



36 EDWAED BOWEN 

and interest ; but it is by no means the equal of another 
which dates from the following year, and to which was 
awarded the Burney Prize. This prize had been founded 
in 1845, and the trust-deed required that the subject selected 
for competition should be ' on some moral or metaphysical 
subject, on the Existence, Nature, and Attributes of God, 
or on the Truth and Evidence of the Christian Beligion.' 
In 1858, when Edward Bowen won it, the subject set by 
the Vice-Chancellor had been ' The Force of Habit, con- 
sidered as an Argument to prove the Moral Government of 
Man by God.' It is beyond all question a splendid piece of 
work — splendid alike in matter and style. If the essay had 
been written by the late Bishop Westcott in his under- 
graduate, or early graduate, days, his biographer would have 
pointed to it — and with justice — as an earnest of the original 
thought and spiritual sincerity which were to characterise 
him in after years, and to raise him to a level of pre-eminence 
among modern theologians and divines. Edward Bowen's 
strongly religious nature is shown in every page of this re- 
markable composition, as well as the width and extent of his 
reading. It is from the pen of a young man of two-and- 
twenty, but it is full of suggestiveness, even for the mature 
thought of the present day. 1 

The force of habit is represented by the writer as one of 
the greatest of the Divine workmen. It is found in inanimate 
nature ; it is found in man ; and the results of its influence 
are the kingdom of God and the citizen trained and fitted 
for that kingdom. It is with the second of these points 
that the essay commences. Can we trace the work of the 
force of habit in ourselves ? What is its value in connection 
with the will and the emotional nature of man ? If we can 
answer these questions, not indeed completely, for that is 
beyond hope — since ' it is almost impossible distinctly to 
classify the influences at work upon the human will, to define 
accurately what part of the constitution may be considered 
as bearing directly upon the moral nature, and what part 
only mediately ' — but at any rate in some measure, then we 
may hope to go on to the larger field of the world in which 

1 The full text of the essay will be found among the Appendices. 



A MEMOIE 37 

we live and move and have our being, and hope to find it 
there also. Now it is perfectly clear that in man the force 
of habit is found with a twofold energy. It sometimes 
will stimulate ; it sometimes will weaken and even deaden. 
This double character of its influence is noticeable as regards 
both the physical and the moral nature of man. Take 
his physical nature first. The force of habit is 'found 
strengthening and increasing the power of action. Outdoor 
exercise develops the boy's frame. The use of an oar does 
not occasion, as it becomes habitual, the muscular fatigue 
at first felt in connection with it. In other words, in 
any matter connected with the body, in which the will is 
either consciously or unconsciously involved, the influence of 
habit ' tends to confirm the operative power.' But it is not 
so always. There is an opposite effect when only ' feelings ' 
are involved. The man or woman accustomed to suffering 
becomes hardened against pain. The palate which is fed on 
sweets is in the course of time unconscious of their sweetness. 
So, too, strains of good music will increase in value for one 
who deliberately exercises his faculties upon them ; but 
they will lose by degrees their charm for the hearer who 
merely listens and never applies anything beyond his power 
of listening. There is an analogy to this double effect 
of habit on physical matters in an experiment connected 
with physiology. In a newly killed animal, one set of 
spinal nerves can be irritated without effect, while if another 
set are touched all the limbs in connection with them are 
thrown into convulsive movement. The same is true of the 
higher nature of man : the force of habit acts diversely. 
Certain sensations lose their keenness through it. ' Fear sub- 
sides, hope sickens, delight palls,' i.e. so far as fear, hope, and 
delight are independent of the will, and are mere animal pro- 
ducts. But once the will comes into play, either consciously 
or unconsciously, the result is different. It is not necessary 
to illustrate the axiom that habit strengthens both the 
mental and moral faculties. It has its witness in every 
sermon, every seminary. Religious faith is no exception to 
the rule, for faith does not exist apart from will. True, faith 
is not always to be tied up with the working of conscious 



38 EDWAED BOWEN 

will. Those who assert such an intimacy of connection ■ do 
violence to the most obvious facts of mental anatomy.' But 
Lord Brougham was entirely wrong when in a famous 
lecture he went so far as to declare that belief is totally 
unconscious. ' He either forgot, or disallowed, the fact that, 
as unconscious physical actions are engendered by conscious 
ones, so the will does act indirectly, though strongly, upon 
opinion.' So far, then, the course along which our argument 
has brought us is clear enough, and the goal to which we 
are led is equally clear. The force of habit extends over 
all parts of the human organisation, but the effects of that 
force are not identical. 

It is not a mere property of the constitution, with a single 
action, and bearing no special marks of adaptation to distinguish 
it from other faculties or properties ; but by a clearly defined law 
its influences are separable into two classes according to the sphere 
of its operation ; the effect being to stimulate the active powers of 
the mind and body, and weaken and deaden those which are only 
passive and extrinsically affected. We have not only a general 
property ; we have a specific law pointing to adaptation and design. 

Whether the law can be found at work in the home of 
man, is a question to which there can be but a very partial 
answer. Our knowledge of the world is so limited that no 
certain results can be obtained in an inquiry of this kind. 
Still we are able here and there to apply tests, and the out- 
come of these is to satisfy us that there are signs that there 
does exist ' a universal property analogous to human habit.' 
(It is in the development of this thesis that the striking 
originality of the essay largely consists.) Proofs are con- 
stantly accumulating that the laws of space and time are 
identical. What is there in the law of space that is sugges- 
tive of the force of habit ? The answer is not far to seek — 
the law of universal attraction. What is its counterpart 
in time? A law which we may speak of as the law of 
' temporal coherence ' and which is ' universal throughout 
nature.' Incidents affect their immediate consequents, and 
such an influence is a powerful one. The influence is less 
strong in proportion as the consequents are more distant, 
but it is none the less at work. An analogy exists in the 



A MEMOIE 39 

truth that ' every particle of matter affects, firstly and chiefly, 
its immediate neighbours, then less strongly those more 
remote.' It is a familiar canon that ' each word we speak 
has infinite effects,' though these effects may be hidden from 
our ken ; just as the infinite effects of moving a pebble 
upon the seashore are beyond realisation. In other words, 
1 time is gifted with the virtue of attraction.' In this 
thought we may perhaps see the reconciliation between those 
controversialists who find in a cause a real motive power, 
and those who declare it to be merely ' a precedent in time ; ' 
because if it be true that event attracts event, then * an 
incident happening in time is hardly dissociable from the 
actual idea of a cause.' Here, then, we appear to have what 
corresponds closely to the force of habit ; and the law which 
we seem to have found can be traced in all types of existence 
which are lower than human life. Indeed it is connected 
with the very sustentation of nature. 

Suppose an inanimate object to exist with certain properties. 
The continuance of one of them through a moment of time produces 
it at the next moment by a sequence or result which is the most 
simple form of self-preservation : the simple tendency of the 
property is to perpetuate itself. Advancing a step higher in the 
scale of nature, the tree shows a more marked, more full, evidence 
of this consequence ; the more the sap circulates, the stronger will 
be the tree, and the more room will it afford for further development. 
And, higher still, in the animals whose life so closely resembles 
ours, we find habits which would seem to differ from ours only in 
proportion to the difference of intelligence and reason. 

These habits in the non-human forms of animal life are 
imperfectly developed; but they are an advance upon the 
characteristics of vegetable life, though they still lack the 
fullness of attainment which awaits them when the human 
level is reached. Coleridge rightly says that ' most wonder- 
fully doth the muscular life in the insect, and the musculo- 
arterial in the bird, imitate and typically rehearse the 
adaptive understanding, yea, and the moral affections and 
charities of man,' adding that ' all lower natures find their 
highest good in semblances and seekings of that which is 
higher and better.' The brute has a side to its nature in 



40 EDWAED BOWEN 

which action, motives, will, play their ordained part ; and 
here what we find at work — affecting instinct, affections, 
sympathies — is the representation of that law of the force of 
habit which we have observed in the human life with which 
God has crowned His creation. It may perhaps be asked, in 
connection with these thoughts, in what relation this law 
(which, as we have seen, makes for self-preservation) stands 
to the law of decay and dissolution by which it is thwarted. 
The answer seems to be that the law of which we are 
speaking is primary, the adverse law secondary. The latter 
is ' engrafted ' on the former. Our own best sentiment con- 
firms what physiologists tell us — ' that death and corrup- 
tion are no necessary portions or consequents of growth and 
vitality, but that they are in fact in the highest sense un- 
natural.' 

These theories, which we have now, so far, brought to an end, 
may perhaps be thought fanciful. But if the word analogy has 
any meaning at all, they are not necessarily untrue. Not only 
the holy books, but the pages of nature as well, were written for 
our learning. Why, indeed, should we suppose that the world is 
governed by different laws from those which govern its inhabitants ? 
If in these efforts to obtain half glimpses of some grand law of 
conservation we have been able to arrive with any degree of satis- 
factory success at a system which connects human action and its 
government with the workings of all nature in its various stages 
of life and growth, then we shall not have solved the mystery of 
responsibility, we shall not have discovered the whole nature of 
conscience, but we shall have given grounds for additional study 
of the relations of daily acts to the total progress and final destiny 
of man. 

What is that final destiny ? The essayist does not treat 
the question as open to any answer but one. It is fitness 
for the kingdom of God. That fitness consists in character. 
Such was the great message of the Eeformation. The 
mediaeval Church had made salvation a matter of mere acts, 
of which some were placed in one scale, and others in the 
opposite one, while the Divine judgment was regarded as 
determining in which the weight preponderated. Such a 
theory of balance was a hopeless one, and was to give place 
to another and much deeper : 



A MEMOIE 41 

Arnold of Brescia had conceived it. Tauler had whispered it 
in the ear. Erasmus had spoken it in the closet. Upon the 
housetops, indeed, Augustine had proclaimed it ; but centuries had 
dimmed the voice. Luther found it written in his heart, and gave 
it to the world. 

The noble conception has found an eloquent exponent in 
a modern English theologian : 

Not, 'What hast thou done?' (says Trench), but 'What art 
thou ? ' will be the question to every man in that day. Sin is not 
exterior to the soul. We form ourselves ; we shape ourselves to 
truth and righteousness and faith ; by our actions, indeed, we shall 
be judged ; but it is not our actions that shall be judged, but our- 
selves. 

And because salvation is a question for each man of 
what he is, therefore the part played by habit in shaping the 
destiny of each soul is obvious enough : 

By habit, extending to each individual deed^ the course of our 
lives is bound together by one great moral chain. Its links are 
great and small ; but there is one for every action. The man who 
acts thriftily becomes thrifty, and saves his heritage. The man 
who plays the prodigal is soon a prodigal at heart, and cannot 
but lose where he might have gained. In no other way than this, 
each act of right or wrong bears testimony to the moral will, 
develops the moral character, advances steadily and progressively 
the moral consummation. Truly in our own selves, no less than 
without, we are compassed about with an innumerable company of 
witnesses. Of the number are the nameless charities, the silent 
heroisms, the impractical, undemonstrative motions of goodness 
and love ; of the number, too, is the eiirepioraTos afxaprla, the sin 
that cleaves like a garment. As surely as the growth of each leaf 
changes the form of the tree, so surely does each of these, with a 
distinct reality and life of its own, tend, one by one, to form and 
mould the man. 

And thus development is essential to the moral law — 
development doing its work in part through the influence of 
habit. By such a train of thought we are led moreover 
to realise that punishment in the next world is not some- 
thing arbitrary and external, but, like blessedness, the direct 
outcome of what a man has been here. Thought cannot 



42 EDWAED BOWEN 

foretell in what the penalties then to be inflicted will really 
consist, but we can say this much at least of each requital, 
that it will be ' a consequence akin to the crime.' Another 
corollary also follows : ' Christianity is a religion of motives.' 
It is not so much by the result of an act, as by the aim 
which prompted it, that we rise. It is by the efforts made by 
will and conscience, not by the actual things done, that we 
mount the ladder to final blessedness. Again it follows that 
we cannot parcel offences off into sins mortal and sins venial. 
Such ' minor niceties of arrangement ' are alien to the simple 
laws of morality. 

We may illustrate this portion of the argument by the 
metaphor of a lordly fabric. The foundation is the moral 
law. Upon it the workmen, which are habits, rear the 
building, which is either a temple of God or an abode of 
Satan. But whichever it is, the building stands firm. And 
it is in the conception of ' habit as the architect of the 
edifice ' that we have the explanation of what is at first 
sight a strange circumstance. ' Not every act connected 
with morality is a conscious one.' There are deeds of splendid 
virtue on the one hand, or of dark atrocity on the other, 
which seem to proceed from instinct rather than from 
deliberate choice ; and yet we hold the author of the deed 
fully responsible, and award him praise or blame. Why is 
it? Simply because the instinct which actuated him was 
the outcome of the force of habit. 

We may sum up all in the words of the Psalmist, and 
say that in much more than a mere phrase, ' His mercy 
is over all His works ; ' or our conclusion may find its 
expression in the great lines of Tennyson : 

For so the whole round world is every way 
Bound with gold chains about the feet of God. 

The instinct of brutes becomes consecrated when it is thought 
of as one of the ' works touched and hallowed by that 
wondrous mercy.' Nay, wherever we find 'the law of 
which habit is the human exponent, there also appears the 
guiding law, for which " moral " is hardly too great a term.' 
Habit is the great trainer of men, fitting them for things 



A MEMOIE 43 

unspeakable. It may of course become our ruin ; but it is 
our own fault if it be so. ' But that the gift is for our use 
and profit ; that by it we rise not only on our dead selves, 
but upon our living selves as it were, to higher things ; that 
it carries engraven upon it the express sentence of the 
Divine will for our moral progress and perfection — this it is 
enough for us to know.' 

The final passage of the essay is one of singular force 
and beauty : 

The end of such an investigation as the present can never be 
unmeaning to ourselves. We can never attempt to attain a 
clearer sight of an ordinance of Divine goodness, without finding 
and consecrating to ourselves if it be but the dust of the chamber 
oL heavenly wisdom. Such considerations as these may tell us 
much, even though the speculation should be crude and the 
analysis imperfect. They tell us that if we are living under a 
paramount dispensation of right and wrong, so surely an atmo- 
sphere of moral significance breathes in the smallest acts of our 
will ; that habit, if it be no more, is the link which connects the 
meanest of ordinary deeds with the great laws which are a 
Theocracy over the hearts of all men. We exempt no person and 
no act from their influence ; we believe that they rule the earth ; 
that as 'the world is so framed by the word of God, that the 
things which meet our eyes consist not of mere objects of sense,' 
so they have rather their subsistence on the mind of a God whose 
prime law in our hearts is the sense of moral duty, the essence of 
that education and that Divine economy by which the whole course 
of His ' Church,' however wide be the issues of that word, is not 
only ' governed,' but ' sanctified.' 

In 1858, too, came the critical examination for the 
Classical Tripos. Edward Bowen was supposed by many to 
have the best chance of the much coveted distinction of 
Senior Classic, and he had ventured himself to entertain 
hopes of the splendid reward. But the honour was to go 
elsewhere; and if a short undated note, written to his 
mother in the course of some examination, refers to this 
particular one, as it almost certainly does, he felt himself 
that his work had not been throughout it all that he could 
have wished. ' The examination is over to-morrow. I have 
been doing not quite so well as I expected. I did very badly 



U EDWAED BOWEN 

at first, but have been recovering it rather since.' None 
the less, the blow, when it came, was a very heavy one. 
The present Professor E. C. Clark was senior, two others 
were bracketed equal second; Edward Bowen was only 
fourth. He spoke of it years afterwards to a pupil as ' the 
greatest disappointment of his life ; ' and so stunned was he 
by it that he never remembered, as long as he lived, what 
happened to him on the day when the lists came out, beyond 
having a vague idea that he had been to a theatre in the 
evening. At the same time he felt in later manhood, when 
he looked back calmly upon the matter, that the comparative 
failure had never made the smallest difference to his career. 
There is one slight example of his work during this unfor- 
tunate examination which may be quoted here. It was given 
by him to the same pupil to whom he spoke, about a quarter 
of a century afterwards, of the grievousness of his vexation. 
It is a rendering into English verse of Euripides' ' Helena,' 
1107-1131. 

Bird that lovest a place of rest 
In the boughs of the leafy cover, 

A temple of song is thy quiet nest, 

And thy tearful melody thrilleth best 
From thy bower all shaded over. 

Come, come, come, with thy throat of gold, 

And thy tuneful mellow cadence, 
Come tell us the sorrow that must be told, 
And the thrilling tale of tears unfold, 
And the woe from the spears of Hellas rolled 

On Helen of Troy's sad maidens. 

He came from the plains of Troy, he came, 

Borne over the surging waters, 
And with him the bridal bed of shame, 
And the queen the fairest in mortal fame 

Of Lacedsemonia's daughters. 

Greeks fell by the spear-head's brazen blow ; 

Greeks fell by the strong shower ; 
Greeks people the gloomy world below, 
And their wives uproot their hair for woe ; 
No palace since long and long ago 

Knows ever a bridal hour. 



A MEMOIE 45 

Of another scene at another while 

The Capharid rocks have spoken ; 
One arm slew many by cruel guile, 
One hand uplifted the beacon pile 
And lighted the traitor token. 

In the twelve months that followed the Tripos examina- 
tion he gained another University prize essay — on- the 
character of William III., 1 and in 1859 the last honour that 
his college could give him — election to a Fellowship. 

Edward Bowen's position in the University as one of the 
most distinguished and brilliant of the undergraduates was 
also recognised by his election to the * Apostles ' — a very 
select and private coterie, to which none but the most 
intellectual men belonged ; and one of his most famous 
songs in after years — ' Giants ' — was perhaps based on an 
essay that he wrote for this society. Another and a very 
different club, in which throughout his career as an under- 
graduate he took much interest, and from which he derived 
much pleasure, was the Cambridge Union. This society, it 
need hardly be said, did not in those days possess its present 
buildings, but held its weekly meetings in ' an old cramped 
building in Green Street, terribly hot and ill ventilated.' 
Here, however, there were many vigorous debates, especially 
on current politics ; and in these Edward Bowen frequently 
took an active part. He is not remembered as in any way 
an orator ; he spoke quickly and eagerly, even jerkily, and 
with considerable vivacity of gesture ; but his speeches had 
much success. His great and well-merited reputation and 
the comparative maturity of his opinions gave him a stand- 
ing among his contemporaries which insured for him 
attention and respect, while his charm of manner more than 
atoned for any faults attaching to his utterance. The 
subjects of his speeches are shown from the minute-book of 
the Union, and they are of interest as throwing considerable 
light on his views at this time. It will be noticed that his 
dislike of aggression, his sympathy with weaker Powers, and 
his desire for peace, marked him during this undergraduate 
period at the University as all through the rest of his life. 
1 No copy of this has been preserved. 



46 EDWAED BOWEN 

But in home matters there was in these earlier days a vein 
of anti-Liberalism which found no part in the political 
opinions of his later and mature years. His first speech 
was on May 1, 1855, when the present Speaker of the 
House of Commons 1 moved ' That the party commonly called 
" Cobdenite " has done the country good service.' To this 
Edward Bowen led the opposition. He does not seem to 
have spoken again until six months afterwards, when he 
moved, with the present Master of Trinity (Dr. H. M. 
Butler) in the chair, « That the present time is so favourable 2 
for the re-establishment of peace, that it is the duty of the 
Western Powers to show themselves ready to negotiate with 
Bussia for that object.' A week afterwards (November 27, 
1855) he spoke, late in a debate, against a motion, ' That the 
present attitude of Sardinia affords the best hope for the 
freedom of Italy.' 3 In the Lent Term of 1856 he was elected 
Vice-President of the Society, and President of the Library 
Committee, the latter position being one for which he was, 
through his unusual literary gifts and knowledge, especially 
fitted, and in which he is remembered as having done good 
service. On February 5, 1856, he supported a motion, ' That 
the proposals accepted by Bussia contain the basis of an 
honourable peace.' The week following he spoke in favour 
of the abolition of the income tax as * both unjust in theory 
and absurd in practice.' The following week the present 
Bight Hon. J. W. Mellor moved, ' That Lord John Bussell 
deserves the gratitude of his country.' From this Edward 
Bowen was the leading dissentient. In May of that year he 
opposed — and his opposition was a forecast of his later 
antagonism to a ' forward ' policy in India — a motion, « That 
the annexation of Oude was a justifiable and laudable act 
on the part of the British Administration in India.' 4 A 

1 The Eight Hon. W. C. Gully. 

2 Sebastopol had fallen in the preceding September. 

3 Sardinia had joined the Allies against Russia, sending a force of some 
15,000 men to the Crimea. Cavour hoped in this way to secure the friendship 
of France in his struggle with Austria. 

4 The consent of the Court of Directors to the annexation had reached Lord 
Dalhousie at midnight on January 2. Outram's mission and the deposition of 
the king had taken place in the following month. 



A MEMOIE 47 

fortnight later he opposed a motion — strangely enough in 
view of his subsequent opinions — ' That the admission of 
Dissenters to the full privileges of the Universities would be 
a just and right measure.' x In the October term of 1856 he 
was elected President; but the week before he took the 
chair he moved a resolution against ' The threatened inter- 
ference of England and France at Naples ' as contrary to 
' the true principles of international justice.' In the last 
debate of that term he left the chair to oppose a motion, 
moved by the present Archbishop of Sydney, 'That the 
interference of the King of Prussia with the affairs of 
Neufchatel is unwarrantable and unjust.' On February 23, 
1857, a motion was made by the present Eev. Chancellor 
Lias (Eector of East Bergholt, near Colchester), ' That the 
establishment under proper supervision of religious brother- 
hoods and sisterhoods would be advantageous.' Edward 
Bowen supported the proposition, being doubtless impelled 
to do so by the strong philanthropic sentiment which 
would commend to his sympathies any associations de- 
voting themselves to work among the poor and outcast. 
His Conservatism, however, comes out again a week later, 
when he opposes a proposition to extend the franchise to ten- 
pound householders in the counties. On March 10 and 17 
of that year (1857) there was a long discussion on a resolution 
that ' This House would regret a change at the present time 
in her Majesty's Government.' 2 Edward Bowen, who, then 
as always, detested the military spirit, spoke against the 

1 The matter was then before Parliament. ' In the Cambridge Act, which 
followed in 1856, all other degrees except in divinity were also freed from the 
test, though not so as to confer a vote in the Senate, for which a declaration of 
Church membership was still required. These very limited concessions to the 
national demand were, in fact, as their enemies regarded them, " the thin end 
of the wedge." Few Dissenters as yet were induced to matriculate at Oxford ; 
but a good many entered Cambridge, some of whom graduated with high 
honours. Thus a fresh nucleus of agitation was created within the University, 
and a fresh argument was supplied to those who were contending for reform ' 
(Prof. Campbell's Nationalisation of the Old English Universities, pp. 91 f.). 

2 The Government of Lord Palmerston had just been defeated on Mr. 
Cobden's motion condemning the proceedings in China, consequent on the 
seizure of the 'Arrow.' The dissolution which followed brought Lord 
Palmerston back with a large majority. 



48 EDWAED BOWEN 

motion. So, too, he spoke against a motion made shortly 
afterwards hy the present Sir George Trevelyan, 'That 
capital punishment enforced uniformly, and without appeal, 
would be a just and efficient check on the crime of murder.' 
In the Lent Term, 1858, he spoke — the Conservative side of 
his mind again asserting itself — against a motion declaring the 
recent suppression of public journals by the Emperor of the 
French to be * an impolitic and tyrannical measure ; ' x while 
shortly afterwards he again showed his severance from the 
' jingo ' feeling of the time by opposing (in his last speech) a 
motion, ' That the measure proposed by Lord Palmerston for 
the alteration of the law against conspiracy is inopportune 
and uncalled for.' 2 

Additional light is thrown on his political opinions and 
ideals by a paper — ably and vigorously written, though some- 
what slight, and obviously the outcome of spare moments — 
which he contributed in 1858, the year of his degree and 
of the Burney Prize Essay, to ' Academica,' an ephemeral 
Cambridge magazine, on the subject of ' Modern War.' 3 
The salutary effect of war upon selfishness and corruption 
at home seems to the essayist to be overstated in such a 
poem as Tennyson's ' Maud.' Commercial prosperity makes 
for the boon of material happiness, and until it is shown that 
such prosperity is the parent of crime, let us seek for it. 
The love of fighting is part of our brute instincts, and it is 
no part of the duty of the Christian Church to stimulate and 
encourage them. As regards the Crimean War itself, the 
essayist believes it to have been defensible on moral grounds. 
It was undertaken against aggression in defence of the 
common welfare. Russia had ' attacked an individual part 
of the common body of European interest, which it was our 
duty to defend.' The object, therefore, of the war was such 
as to ennoble the efforts made to carry it on. On the other 
hand, mere selfishness, or a coarse pride in strength, degrades 

1 Orsini's attempt to assassinate the French Emperor had been made early 
in that year (January 14). 

2 Lord Palmerston's Bill made conspiracy to murder a felony in England, as 
already in Ireland, and punishable with transportation. It was defeated on 
Mr. Milner Gibson's amendment, and Lord Palmerston resigned in consequence. 

3 The essay will be found among the Appendices. 



A MEMOTE 49 

military undertakings, even when those undertakings are 
exemplified in an Alma or an Inkermann. The writer then 
passes on to praise with enthusiasm Lord Clarendon's sug- 
gestion at the Congress of Paris that mediation should be 
generally employed as a substitute for the arbitrament of 
arms. 

Well spoken, representative of England ! Is not this a positive 
gain? May we not presume that we have here the germ of a 
system which after years and years may lead us, in spite of all the 
- Mauds ' that can be written, to cast our hopes, not on the 
coming of a Eussian fleet against Portsmouth, but on the steady 
and unselfish working of honest diplomacy, and very possibly a 
multitude of those processes of civilisation which more than one 
parliamentary orator would call hypocrisies and shams ? 

The essayist goes on to argue that the war in the Crimea 
had been too far off to bring to this country much improve- 
ment socially and politically. It was not as when the 
Armada threatened England in the sixteenth century. Then 
the result had been national unity where previously there 
had been discord and party divisions. Then, under the 
gathering of the storm over the land itself, there came the 
healing of internecine quarrels and the repair of broken bonds 
and the transformation of enmities into alliances. These 
results had been excellent ; but valuable and important as 
they were, they had been purchased at a very high price. 
Nor was the price one which must perforce be paid for them. 
The existing generation had a better and stronger substitute 
for war by which to rise above its present level. It might 
seem a poor thing to have to work by means of statistics and 
blue-books and debates and diplomacy, but these might do 
at least as much for England as an invasion by the French. 
The path of peace and of commercial activity did not lead 
away from the true goal of a great country. 

It is not that the nation has changed ; it is not that its work 
has degenerated ; it is but that civilisation has brought its fruits ; 
and among them we reckon a gravity of political action, which may 
indeed appear to obliterate the freshness of popular energy, but 
leaves in its stead the possibility of equal vigour combined with a 
recognition of the laws which have altered, we believe for good, 

E 



50 EDWAED BOWEN 

the relations which we bear man to man, and nation to nation. 
We are going on in a path which is not averse to energy, and 
not repugnant to honesty ; we have openings wider and wider 
every day for the lover of his country to do it what good he may. 
If we wish, then, to go on and advance till we approach more 
nearly, and as nearly as may here be, to the form of a perfect 
nation, if we desire that 

i — noble thought be freer under the sun, 
And the heart of the nation beat with one desire,' 

let us ennoble that desire, and strive to enrich that thought, not 
in a mere outward enthusiasm caught from some instinct of the 
sinews, but by those means which are prepared by the onward 
progress of humanity for the use and benefit of nations which 
recognise their highest happiness in the quiet routine of 
civilisation. 

But during these years of undergraduate life Edward 
Bowen was not merely a scholar, an essay writer, and a 
debater. He was then, as afterwards, an untiring athlete. 
He does not indeed appear to have played much cricket at 
Cambridge — ' "Willow the King ' was a monarch whose 
reign over his interests had net yet commenced — but he was 
in the Eight of the Second Trinity Boating Club, a society 
which has now for some time been extinct, but which was 
then a flourishing institution composed to a considerable 
extent of reading men. J. S. Thomas, to whom reference 
has already been made, was another member of the crew. 
Neither he nor Edward Bowen was a really first-rate oar ; 
but each was a genuine enthusiast, and ' such was the work 
that their zeal did ' that Second Trinity rapidly rose until 
the boat was within one place of the headship of the river. 

Edward Bowen was, too, a zealous skater, and is said 
to have skated on one occasion from Cambridge to King's 
Lynn. At another time he skated from Cambridge to Ely 
and back twice in the same day. But walking was his 
favourite pastime, a frequent companion being Elliott. The 
two both delighted in Ely, and their first long walk together 
had for its object what, says Sir Charles Elliott, ' was a 
sort of Mecca to us.' Their longest tramp was from Cam- 
bridge to London. 



A MEMOIE 51 

I am not likely (writes the same correspondent) to forget how 
tender the soles of my feet became towards the end, and how piti- 
fully, but vainly, I entreated him, when the first hansom came in 
sight, to accept the doctrine that we had reached London, though 
we had not arrived at the place which he marked down as the 
limit of our journey. 

His most celebrated walk, however — and one very rarely 
accomplished — was a little later, and was taken in company 
with another friend than Elliott, who had then gone to India. 
The walk was from Cambridge to Oxford ; and the time 
occupied over the feat was twenty-six consecutive hours, 
beginning at midnight, Edward Bo wen having been delayed 
towards the end for some four hours by the unfortunate 
breakdown of his companion, whom he had to leave behind, 
and without whom he finished the great effort. He some- 
times in after days spoke of the completeness for the moment 
of his exhaustion. Body and nerves were both utterly tired 
out. Opposite St. Mary's Church — it was about two o'clock 
in the morning — he leaned heavily for a few minutes against a 
lamp-post. A policeman came up and doubted his condition. 
' Where have you come from ? ' was the query. ' Cambridge,' 
was the weary answer, which scarcely reassured the officer 
of justice. However, he fortunately succeeded, in some way 
or other, in satisfying the suspicions of his questioner, and 
crawled on to his hotel. It says a great deal for his power 
of recovery that he was next morning not much the worse 
for all that he had gone through. The achievement was 
one of which he was naturally proud, and when at Harrow 
he used to encourage the more athletic of his pupils to 
imitate it ; and two or three of them have succeeded in 
following in his steps — but only two or three. 

There is no need to say how deep was his affection 
throughout his life for Cambridge. The thoughts of such 
days — with the one sad exception of the day of the publica- 
tion of the lists — could never be unwelcome or distasteful 
to him. That period was to him, as to so many others, a 
beloved memory. There was often thitherwards that retro- 
spect, that glance into the past, of which he speaks in one 
of his songs : 

E 2 



52 EDWAED BOWEN 

One look baok — as we hurry o'er the plain, 

Man's years speeding us along — 
One look back ! From the hollow past again, 

Youth come flooding into song ! 
Tell how once, in the breath of summer air, 

Winds blow fresher than they blow ; 
Times long hid, with their triumph and their oare, 

Yestorday — many years ago ! l 

And as he looked back upon his own recollections of his 
University, and added to his own associations the experiences 
of his friends and pupils, and compared them with the 
testimony, direct or indirect, of others whose lot had been 
cast elsewhere, there was formed a strong and genuine 
belief, to which he always adhered — not the sentiment of 
a partisan, but the impartial view of a man of judgment — in 
the superiority of Cambridge to Oxford. 

1 Song for Old Harrovians, 



A MEMOIR 53 



II 

As his Cambridge career drew to its close, Edward Bowen 
had more than one offer of scholastic work. He chose to 
go as assistant master to Marlborough, then a new school, 
of which Dr. Bradley, afterwards Dean of Westminster, 
was the head. Dr. Bradley had been Charles Bowen's tutor 
at Bugby, and he was only too glad of the opportunity of 
securing the services of his old pupil's brilliant brother. 
But Marlborough masterships were then ill paid, and Dr. 
Bradley was ever ready to help, as far as he could, his 
subordinates to posts in richer schools. Edward Bowen's 
stay there lasted less than a single term. He seems to have 
commenced his work in the middle of the school quarter, and 
he had not been there a month when promotion to a 
mastership at Harrow followed. Dr. Bradley had sung his 
praises to Dr. Vaughan, when the latter was on a visit, with 
the result that an offer had at once been made to Edward 
Bowen to join the Harrow staff. Of these few weeks at 
Marlborough some scanty gleanings are derivable from a 
letter sent by Edward Bowen to a friend. The letter is 
interesting, for in the first place it shows that he had, like 
others, his early difficulties in discipline to contend with — 
difficulties which followed him to Harrow ; and in the second 
place we see in it his feeling as to the comradeship which 
should exist between boys and masters — a feeling which was 
to find practical expression at Harrow. 

Having been intellectually employed for the whole of the last 
twelve hours, with the exception of three short meals, I take up as 
a change the occupation of writing to you. ... I came down 
about a fortnight ago ; and leave in about three weeks more — that 
is to say, what is left of me will then leave ; for with these morn- 
ing chapels and small boys I am getting quite the pelican upon 



54 EDWAED BOWEN 

the housetop, which withereth afore it be dried up, or any other 
natural phenomenon expressive of prolonged and fatal exertions. 
I am not doing the Sixth, as you suppose, but only a form of 
some small boys, the most blessed young rascals I ever came 
across, and a few of the Sixth to coach privately. The latter are 
better than I should have expected ; the former I can't draw a 
more terrible picture of, than by saying they are precisely like what 
I conceive myself to have been when at the age of about thirteen. 
I am thinking of astonishing them with one or two bursts of severity 
of a ferocious order. I sit up every night practising a look of 
authority before the looking glass ; and my friends tell me it 
becomes me quite naturally. 

As to liking it, one can't feel oneself in Paradise when one has 
to work like this ; but it is very pleasant, only I am getting rather 
to wish it was over. Fact is, I am trying to read for myself too, 
and the two don't get on. . . . You say, what do I think of it ? I 
confess, I think the system extremely good, in fact nearly perfect ; 
the only thing is that it cannot be entirely acted up to. A house 
I think a mistake, and the boys are altogether too crowded, the 
place too small ; and I should think the Headmaster's position 
was not very pleasant, but the masters associating together, and 
mixing so much with the boys, is first-rate. There is something to 
my taste quite delightful in having a fellow in to tea in the evening 
and setting him an imposition the first thing next morning ; or 
keeping him in the first part of the afternoon, and playing cricket 
with him the second — quite what a master's work should be. . . . 
If you had any bowels of compassion, you would write to a fellow 
who was a miserable galley slave, at least once a week — say 
every Toosday for instance ; and the first time you do so tell him 
about your movements, and give him a tip or two about the place, 
and what your views on detention are, and what is the best mode of 
conducting preparation, which institution I hereby solemnly de- 
nounce and execrate. ... If this epistle is interesting to you, it will 
speak volumes in favour of your attachment to Marlborough ; 
for the fact is, I am' so sleepy that I don't know what I have been 
writing, and I am going to bed, and I hate morning chapel, and 
am your affectionate friend. 

It must have been shortly after this letter that Edward 
Bowen sent a brief note (undated) to his mother giving her 
the list of Fellows elected to Trinity, which had just been 
published, and also telling her of the proposal with regard 
to Harrow which had been made to him : 



A MEMOIR 55 

Vaughan has just offered me a mastership at Harrow. To 
begin at Christmas ; a low form, with light work, which is an ad- 
vantage. Vaughan guarantees 300Z. for the first year, and promises 
that it shall not be less at all events afterwards. What do you 
think ? I rather incline towards taking it. 

A little later on he writes again to her : 

I came back yesterday from my visit to Vaughan — a very short 
one— but just enough to assure me there was such a place as 
Harrow. I like Vaughan very much ; even more than I had ex- 
pected. The place is small, on the top of a hill, and the school 
externally nothing very imposing ; pretty chapel ; one good 
sermon from Vaughan; another of horrible and preternatural 
dullness from some other master. Of course some of the masters 
are somewhat more advanced in years than the Marlborough men ; 
in fact, I sha'n't have a soul in the place of my own age within four 
years either way. 

They hold out dismal prospects of the expensiveness of the 
place. The absence of lodgings is quite singular; not a single 
furnished lodging in the place vacant that they know of. All the 
openings for a bachelor are : (1) unfurnished apartments over a 
shop, with no entrance except through it, and the unpleasant 
possibility always before one's eyes of having one's furniture 
distrained for rent; (2) some way from the school a small 
wooden house of the style, though not the grand appearance, of 
that one in the Isle of Wight ; for which the charge is, unfurnished, 
40Z. a year including taxes. It doesn't matter what one has for 
half a year, or a year, to begin with, as other things may turn 
up. I rather think I shall take No. 1 if I hear of nothing better. 
Mrs. Vaughan was very kind. . . . 

This letter seems to dispose of one tradition which has 
adhered at Harrow to Edward Bowen's first appearance 
there. It was whispered — so runs the legend — as the un- 
known visitor was seen in chapel that he was * the new 
master,' and that he had just walked over from Cambridge. 
There is a further story that after chapel he set out to walk 
back again, but lost himself in the dark in the neighbour- 
hood of St. Albans. It seems pretty clear, however, thafc 
he had not come from Cambridge at all, but from Marl- 
borough, and that he returned there immediately. 1 

1 Edward Bowen, however, had, as has already been mentioned, walked 
from Cambridge to London in his undergraduate days. 



56 EDWARD BOWEN 

It was, then, in January 1859 that Edward Bowen entered 
on his work at Harrow, which was to last over a period of 
forty-two j'ears, terminating only with his life — a period ' to 
which,' writes a colleague, ' for its wide-spread influence, its 
versatile brilliance, and its unselfish strenuousness, it would 
be difficult, if not impossible, to find a parallel.' He was at 
once thoroughly happy in his profession, though his troubles 
with regard to the maintenance of order continued for a 
short while. Thus he writes again to his mother : 

I am getting on all right ; began work absolutely on Thursday, 
and am now fairly into it. I have thirty-three small boys, from 11 
to 16, to instruct in Homer, Caesar, and the like, who are, I suppose, 
pretty much like all other boys, of a playful nature, and generally 
uncontrollable. The only way is to bully them tremendously at 
first, but it is easier in theory than practice. 

One who was a couple of terms afterwards in his form, 
and who is now himself a well-known public schoolmaster, 1 
bears out in a letter this confession of perplexities in the 
matter of discipline : 

In those days he was no disciplinarian, and ' quern virum's ' — 
his favourite punishment was this ode — flew about freely without 
much effect. But he soon acquired the power of control, and no 
one who knew him later would ever suspect his earlier difficulties. 

Edward Bowen had only just completed the first twelve 
months of his new work, when a critical hour in the fortunes 
of the School suddenly struck. Dr. Vaughan resigned. His 
headmastership had lasted over a term of fifteen years, in 
which time he had been ' in every sense the restorer of 
Harrow.' The numbers had increased from 69 to 469 ; and the 
reputation of the School had risen from its lowest, almost to 
its highest, level. For Dr. Vaughan as a headmaster Edward 
Bowen ever had the greatest admiration. He w T ould say of 
him that 'Vaughan invented discipline.' The orderliness 
of the School arrangements, and the good conduct of the 
boys, were to his mind the especial results of that term of 
government ; and they were results that were enduring. Of 
his personal relations with the great headmaster in after 

1 Mr. H. Richardson, of Marlborough. 




m,//,; _.'7w/.- 



I// ///> l/l/f />/ // /'I'/// J.'.'J ///!/>. ) 



A MEMOIE 57 

years it is not necessary to say anything in detail. They are 
sufficiently shown by the fact that when Dr. Vaughan was 
buried (in the autumn of 1897) it was Edward Bowen who 
read the Lesson. 

The crisis in the history of the School was a grave one, 
and it was with much anxiety that the decision of the 
governing body as to Dr. Vaughan's successor was awaited. 
The choice fell upon an old Harrovian, himself the distin- 
guished son of a former headmaster of the School. The 
completeness with which that choice was justified is univer- 
sally acknowledged. The whole public-school world knows 
the character of the twenty-five years' headmastership of 
Dr. H. M. Butler, and is aware how successfully he continued 
and developed the work of his predecessor. For a quarter 
of a century the School was privileged to have the advan- 
tages of his scholarship, his spirituality, his lovable character, 
his personal charm, his devotion to a great calling. Edward 
Bowen had been a warm advocate of the appointment upon 
which the governors determined. As has been said, he had 
been a pupil of Dr. Butler's at Cambridge, and he had learned 
there to appreciate his new chief's high attainments. Twenty- 
five years of colleagueship and close friendship were now to 
commence for him, in which his own reputation was to be 
born and to grow almost to its fullest and ripest manhood. 
In the greatness and increase of that reputation few, 
if any, had truer joy and pride than the Headmaster, 
whose chivalry and magnanimity rendered impossible the - 
jealousy which a small and mean man might have felt, 
and who was always eager to recognise and publish abroad 
the brilliancy and success of his subordinate. Through all 
those many many ' months of worry and work ' some diver- 
sities of view could scarcely fail perhaps to arise at times ; 
but whatever the minor differences of opinion that may now 
and again have asserted themselves over questions of school 
management, they were never such as to over-cloud the 
sunshine of their personal friendship. 

Edward Bowen found at Harrow traditions as to the 
relations of masters and boys somewhat different from those 
which he had welcomed at Marlborough. The Harrow 



58 EDWAED BOWEN 

masters were an older and consequently a more conservative 
set of men ; and they did not as a rule permit, much less 
encourage, that intimacy between masters and pupils which 
is now a generally recognised feature in public-school life. 
It is true that attempts were being made by two or three of 
the younger and fresher members of the staff to break down 
a barrier which was both unreasonable and mischievous, but 
there was a strong opposition in favour of its retention as 
necessary to discipline and to the dignity of the teacher. So 
far did this opposition go, that Edward Bowen was remon- 
strated with on one occasion by a senior colleague for walking 
to his house in conversation with two or three boys. His 
own strong feeling was of course all the other way, and he 
soon showed it in a set of verses entitled, ' The Battle of the 
Bolts,' of which the exact date is uncertain, but which un- 
questionably comes from these early years. The satire is 
descriptive of a meeting of the gods (the masters), in which 
the subject of their dealings with mortals (the boys) comes 
under discussion. Olympus is aware that all is not right, and 
that a revision of policy is in some sort desirable. Their 
authority over mortals is not what it was. The bolts are 
not feared as they once were, and as they ought to be. 
What is to be done ? The various deities give their opinions, 
the council being exceedingly disturbed at a revolutionary 
suggestion from Mercury, ' Suppose we turn human.' Under 
the masks of the several gods the faces of various masters 
are of course to be recognised. Mercury is Edward Bowen 
himself, and his suggestion, which causes so much alarm 
and distress among his celestial colleagues, represents the 
young master's view of the attitude of sympathy and 
familiarity which the teacher should adopt towards the 
taught. The following are the verses, which are given in 
their entirety ; for though the fun is perhaps here and there 
a little merciless, it is not of a character to give any real 
pain, even if the identification of the speakers be satis- 
factorily established. The verses show, too, beneath all the 
banter and levity which characterise them externally, the 
struggle of two ideals. ■ The old order ' is seen ' yielding 
place to new ; ' not, however, f lest one good custom should 



A MEMOIE 59 

corrupt the world,' but because bad customs, however sin- 
cerely and earnestly upheld, are not invincible, and — as 
another poet has reminded us — ' the forts of folly ' will at 
last ' fall.' 

THE BATTLE OP THE BOLTS 

A FRAGMENT 

To the gods of Olympus 'twas Jupiter spoke ; 

His previous orations had ended in smoke : 

But to-night, he declared, he had called them together 

On matters more pressing than diet or weather. 

He had felt — to he candid — profoundly convinced, 

Since the council last sat — here his majesty winced — 



Corrigendum 
Since the publication of this Memoir, it has been ascertained 
that the lines entitled ' The Battle of the Bolts,' printed on 
pp. 59 ff., were not from the pen of Edward Bowen. 



He had tried them last year ; but, of all his sharp -shooting, 

The only effect was to set mortals hooting. 

Besides, it was whispered that some of their number 

Had come to regard them as nothing but lumber. 

Grave rumours had reached him — he hoped they were fibs — 

That Mars had not scrupled to christen them ' squibs ; ' 

Nay, had modelled himself an infernal machine — 

On a plan ' scientific ' — whate'er that might mean : 

Which, as novelties here were tabooed by the laws, 

Had gone off down on earth with the greatest applause. 

The gods would remember how, ages ago, 

Some villain stole matches for mortals below ; 

(If not, he might briefly remind them, 'twas then 

That Mercury pilfered tobacco from men). 

He referred to the case, since he had an impression 

All troubles were due to that fatal concession ; 



60 EDWAED BOWEN 

Indeed, he had never found mortals refractory 
While Vulcan's was still the one bolt-manufactory. 
But now that mankind had discovered a means 
To menace the skies from their own magazines, 
The louder he thundered, the faster he nodded, 
The greater the scorn that was heaped on his godhead ; 
And do what he would to uphold his dominion, 
It was hopeless to fight against — Public Opinion. 

He paused ; but instead of the usual Babel, 
The council sat mum, and looked hard at the table ; 
Till Pluto, as lord of the lower domain, 
Broke silence at length in the following strain : 

' Your godheads will hardly consider it strange 
If I own my opinion averse to all change. 
The rule I have followed has always been this, 
That what has been is best for the subjects of Dis. 
Beneath my own sceptre the least disaffection 
Is nipped in the bud by remorseless correction ; 
Nay, some have been doomed, beyond hope of appeal, 
Like the culprits of old, to the stone and the wheel. 
As regards our defences, I beg to declare, 
They are still in my judgment as good as they were ; 
Men talk of their needle-guns, science, and stuff : 
Why, let them invade us, we've powder enough ! 
Time was, when your majesty's thunderbolt flashed 
On braggarts confounded, and Titans abashed. 
'Tis potent as ever ; be deaf to this din ; 
We shall find it a fatal mistake to give in. 
If aught be amiss, the young gods are in fault, 
Whom I've always considered unworthy their salt. 
While Mars perseveres in such frivolous scenes 
As the firing of pop-guns and other machines, 
No wonder irreverent mortals declare 
That we bowl without bloodshed, and live without care. 
But are we such lack- wits ? Can no one propose 
Some fun in the way of bombardment or blows ? 
Some foray or fisticuff, sally or siege, 
A rouge or a scrummage, a squash or a squeedge ? 
Here's Mercury ready top-booted and spurred — 
Let him go down to earth, look about, and bring word. 
Daddy Vulcan meanwhile might be shaping your bolts 
On the latest improvement in Whitworth's or Colt's : 



A MBMOIE 61 

And Ganymede too might be spared from the cup 
To take your old aegis, and polish it up.' 

Thus warily spoke he, while, elbow on hip, 
Mars glared at him restlessly, biting his lip ; 
Nor yet had the thunder-cloud passed from his brows, 
When Juno arose, and thus rated her spouse : 

1 Ye faint-hearted craven, ye timorous dolt, 
I'd just like to see ye dispense with your bolt. 
What else are ye king for ? Was this what ye said 
When I gave you my hand, and consented to wed ? 
There's conspiracy somewhere — and that's what it means — 
I knew what 'ud come of infernal machines. 
And let me tell Mars, that, if I catch him near, 
I'll trounce him, I will, with a box on each ear. 
Turn traitor indeed, and not blush to avow it ! 
Well, if I was his father, I wouldn't allow it ! ' 

And more had she said, but an ill-concealed laugh 
From Hebe behind cut her lecture in half ; 
And Jove, who was glad to be rid of her slang, 
Tipped Neptune a wink to commence his harangue. 

The earth-shaker rose, and, appeasing the storm, 
Gave his hearty support to the cause of reform. 
He was loth, he confessed — who would quarrel with ladies ? — 
To dissent toto mari from Here and Hades : 
But felt that, at least in a nautical quarter, 
Their logic would hardly be thought to hold water. 
He avoided dry land ; but from what he had heard, 
He was sure that the hurling of bolts was absurd. 
Despising himself the old method of war, 
He had quite discontinued his trident and car, 
And chosen, in place of the old bugaboo, 
To paddle his way in the agile canoe. 
If it were not presumptuous to offer advice, 
He should move to abolish the bolts in a trice. 
No doubt other gods would bring forward their schemes ; 
He believed in a system of telegraphemes, 
As the best by which Jove might discover his will, 
And the flash of the lightning be utilised still. 
Let a parley be held : it might then be arranged 
That the old constitution of things should be changed. 



62 EDWAED BOWEN 

Olympus must sacrifice something : till then 
It was useless to fret for the oxen of men. 

Then peering about her, half -twinkle, half-scowl, 
Spake Pallas, grey-eyed and demure as her owl : 
• Had it been our good fortune to guess that the cause 
Of our meeting to-night appertained to the laws, 
We had come better armed to so weighty a session, 
And spoken at length with our usual discretion. 
As it is, we refrain : on a future occasion 
We shall hope to make up for to-night's moderation. 
Yet ere we sit down, we would beg to endorse 
What the last speaker urged with such eloquent force ; 
The more, that ourselves have so long recommended 
The very same system for which he contended.' 

So saying, she paused with a satisfied air, 
And Bacchus addressed himself next to the chair. 
Quoth he, ' By my beard ' — 'twas a prominent feature— 
' Man is but a stupid, tho' excellent, creature. 
On a cranium so thick, that your majesty's thunder 
Should fail of its proper effect, is no wonder ; 
But how, if the order of things were reversed, 
And, instead of his skull, we appealed to his thirst ? 
'Tis said that the gods, by their nectar reclined, 
Contentedly bowl at the heads of mankind ; 
I move — as this course only renders them thicker — 
That we lay by our bolts, and try hurling our liquor.' 

He ceased, and a general titter ensued ; 
Some even maliciously whispered, ' He's screwed.' 
Jove saw he was drowsy, so nodded his head, 
And the comical god tottered early to bed ! 

Next Vulcan, who halted on one of his pins, 
Delivered his mind against everyone's shins : 
Called Mars an impostor, and Neptune ' old buffer,' 
And vowed that the trade of Olympus would suffer. 
Week in and week out, let alone other wrongs, 
He had slaved in Jove's armoury hammer and tongs ; 
Had sweated and smelted, had battered and blown, 
To perfect his art in support of the throne ; 
Till, for certain effect and spontaneous ignition, 
There was nothing to equal the bolt-composition. 



A MEMOIR 63 

And now to be shelved by a radical clique ! 

What god could endure to sit quietly meek, 

And hear, without feeling his vitals grow warm, 

Rank treason discussed in the name of Reform ? 

He believed that mankind were a turbulent lot, 

Whose insolent gibes must be checked by hot shot. 

There was nothing, depend on't, would awe them to silence, 

But a high-handed system of organised vi'lence. 

Then Mulciber spouted, defiantly game, 
Till Mars murmured, ' Question,' and Bacchus cried, ' Shame ! ' 
Apollo rose next, with his usual suavity, 
And balanced each word on its centre of gravity : 
' 'Tis patent to any intelligent mind, 
That mortals are leaving Olympus behind : 
All earth is progressive ; we only cling fast 
To the ruins and rags of an obsolete past. 
The gods are aware I prefer to adduce 
Philosophical reasons against an abuse. 
Let us seek for a reXos — but no, 'tis so late, 
A tc'Aos had better be put to debate.' 

Then Mars gat him up, and a shudder ran round, 
For his speech fell as hail when it leaps on the ground. 
His points they were vivid, his metaphors strong, 
And every sixth word was five syllables long : 
' Why babble ye thus ? Dotards ! what do ye mean 
By railing at me and my paltry machine ? 
Rail on, if ye will ; dispossess me, denounce. 
I care not a twopenny rap for your bounce. 
Infatuate beings, unpolicied, blind ! 
Reform is too late, for Olympus is mined ! 
E'en now, while this pother we keep overhead, 
A siege as of old on my sight rushes red ; 
The legions of earth are come up to the fray, 
And we must be victors for ever, or they. 
Proud tamer of mortals ! thy segis is bare, 
Thy fast-flashing thunderbolt hurtles in air ; 
Thy eagle is whetting his beak with his claws, 
Heaven's batteries roar, and earth — only guffaws. 
I tell thee then, lame one, that, helpless to help, 
The bolts that thou forgest are brickdust and kelp : 
Go turn, an thou wilt, to thy bellows again ; 
But the sceptre of gods is departed to men ! ' 



64 EDWAED BOWEN 

He ended, and Vulcan, who felt like a dunce, 
Was for hurling him down out of heaven at once, 
But while all were declining the active of piVra), 
Up Mercury got, and harangued them on tiptoe : 
' By jingo ! if mortals refuse to obey us, 
I vote for returning to-morrow to chaos. 
Let us leave to mankind — I mean no animosity — 
A few of the bolts as a rare curiosity. 
In sight of the world we might easily gibbet them, 
And Vulcan could stay, if he pleased, to exhibit them : 
Or else, we might leave them to rust on the shelves, 
With a notice to say, " We had bolted ourselves : " 
Or, stay, there's another alternative still 
(I'm exceedingly loth to make anyone ill) : 
But suppose we turn human : the deified tell us 
That men are not monsters, but excellent fellows. 
You all must allow that at this time of year 
There's a terrible lack of amusement up here ; 
But if we were human — just fancy the fun, 
For the pastimes of men are a thousand and one ; 
If botany fails, we can try bagatelle ; 
When we're tired of squails, metaphysics, or mell : 
So methinks that reform should be sought in a process 
I'll call by analogy apoandrosis.' 

Thus spake he, and Jove felt his knees growing loose ; 
Dis hid his emotion and merely said, ' Goose ! ' 
Aphrodite collapsed, and went off in a faint ; 
And Vulcan, as usual, was loud in complaint ; 
Minerva almost dropped a stitch in her knitting ; 
And the council at twenty past twelve was left sitting. 

In 1863 Edward Bowen was asked to accept a ' small ' 
house, which had been under the charge of Mr. (many years 
afterwards Bishop) Westcott. It was one of the little red- 
brick houses at the top of Grove Hill, with its view from the 
back windows towards Hampstead ; and ' Hampstead lights ' 
were as time went on to be the subject of one of the most 
beautiful of the School songs. The house was, with some 
others, especially intended for delicate boys, who were 
scarcely fit for the somewhat rougher life of the bigger 
houses, and the number of pupils resident in it would vary 



A MEMOIE 65 

from six to twelve. There is a small garden behind, and on 
one side of the house is a diminutive yard in which about 
three boys can play at a time a spurious form of cricket. 
Here Edward Bowen lived till 1882, and there are many 
in whose memories he will be as closely associated with this 
earlier home, as with the later and much larger one. When 
the offer was first made to him he was very loth to avail 
himself of it, and he finally accepted it only because accept- 
ance was pressed upon him as a duty to the School. Nor 
was his work as a house-master — at any rate to begin with 
— so congenial to him as his work as a form-master or tutor. 
There were, too, he found, special difficulties attaching to 
the management of a few boys by themselves, and to the 
maintenance under those circumstances of the qualities 
which are encouraged by the larger groupings and associa- 
tions of them usually found in public schools. He refers 
to the subject in a letter to a friend. 

Nov. 8, 1865. 

I think the only form in which boys are a nuisance is in the 
house. One is so tied up to hours ; and the parents will keep 
writing letters ; and there is always the chance the boys may 
set the house on fire. I like all the form work, the public teaching, 
very much, and the tutor's work still more, when you have pupils 
who are attached permanently to you while they are at the school. 
And more still, the general society and intercourse of school, 
playing games, casual interests of every kind — in a word, the 
microcosm of school. But the idea of a small house is all a 
mistake. Six or seven boys are too many to have as a kind of 
family ; and too few to have the traditions, public feeling, dignity, 
self-respect, courtesy, by which mainly a large house is governed 
and influenced — so influenced indeed that half one's work, so far 
at least as one's anxieties go, consists in half indirect, half direct, 
efforts to modify and control this public opinion. 

A story which has been preserved by one of Edward 
Bowen's friends shows that he still retained — as indeed he 
retained in some measure to the end — the semi-Bohemianism 
which had somewhat characterised him at Trinity. His 
mother had come to see him in his new house, and, as she sat 
in the drawing room, she complained of a draught which she 

F 



66 EDWAED BOWEN 

located as coming from above the window. ' I don't think 
it can be from there,' said her son, ' for I have put in a coat 
and a rug ; but I'll put in another coat.' There was a 
yawning gap in the wall above the window, which he had in 
this way endeavoured to fill up ! 

During these earlier years of his professional life Edward 
Bowen was a constant contributor, as was his elder brother, 
to the famous ' Saturday Eeview,' and he also wrote more 
than one article for the ' National Eeview,' a magazine 
somewhat after the type of the present ' Quarterly ' or 
• Edinburgh.' It is to be feared that, with the exception of 
an article on ' Games,' which is not of any permanent 
interest, 1 and another to which reference will be made later 
on, and it may be one or two others, all the articles sent 
to the t Saturday Eeview ' are now beyond identification ; 
but an allusion in one of his letters renders it possible 
definitely to assign to him an important article in the 
January number, 1863, of the ' National Eeview,' on ' Bishop 
Colenso on the Pentateuch,' and another — not less note- 
worthy — in the October number in the same year, and in 
the same publication, on ' The recent Criticism of the Old 
Testament.' This latter was a review more especially of 
Dr. Davidson's ' Introduction to the Old Testament.' In 
both articles the writer shows himself a strong and uncom- 
promising advocate of the critical school, and there are 
irrefragable evidences of his complete separation at this 
time from the old Evangelical methods of thought and 
interpretation in which he had been brought up — a separa- 
tion which, it need hardly be said, was continuous and final. 
There are indeed signs and traces of his genuine sympathy 
with those to whom the loss of the old conservative views 
was as the passing of a world ; but he writes with some 
severity of others who, by clinging themselves and requiring 
others to cling to ' impossible loyalties,' add unnecessarily to 
the trials, the difficulties, the perplexities, of religious faith. 
Edward Bowen felt that the ' Higher Criticism ' was as the 
opening of a prison door, and the discharge of men from the 
unhealthy atmosphere of moral and intellectual confinement 
1 His ' U.U.' essay on the same subject was much later. 



A MEMOIR 67 

to the fresh, pure, invigorating air. To him, as to so many 
others, questions hitherto unanswered found their satisfactory- 
reply, problems hitherto unsolved received their clear and 
sufficient solution, when the Bible was found to be a human 
book and to be supernatural only in the sense — doubtless a 
very solemn and inspiring one — that there is a supernatural 
force ever co-operating with the spirit of man. 

The first of the two reviews, 1 that on Bishop Colenso — 
written, it must be remembered, at the age of twenty-six — 
sets out with the aphorism that ' among the heroes who have 
done the greatest service to their race, it is hardly paradoxical 
to assert that the thanks of the world are chiefly due to those 
who have most boldly ventured to differ from it.' The 
dangers that come from obstinacy are greater than those which 
come from innovation, and ' if rashness may lead to error, 
prejudice cannot possibly lead to truth.' In intellectual 
matters a man should never wed himself indissolubly to 
his views : 

The domain of theology supplies a striking proof of the truth of 
these assertions. It is impossible to deny that scriptural criticism 
in the last few years has received far more from the enemies, than 
from the friends, of a rigorous theological conservatism. Whether 
orthodox views be true or not, it is not orthodox divinity which 
has brought about the vast progress that has been lately made in 
the knowledge of Sacred Writ. So it has been from the earliest 
ages of the faith. St. Paul was more than suspected of heresy 
when he offered the Gospel to the Gentiles. All the superstition 
and tyranny of which the Church has been guilty has been due to 
its conservative champions ; every step of progress has been first 
trodden by one who refused its yoke. It surely is more than a 
chance coincidence that the first known commentary on Scripture, 
the first extant canon of the sacred books, even the first virtual 
assertion of their inspiration, are all from the hands of heretics. 
A Protestant Church should deal but little in anathema, which 
remembers that the first protest for freedom of private judgment 
came from the heretic Luther. In modern times, the task of 

1 The essay contains a good deal that is no longer of general interest in its 
somewhat detailed examination of Bishop Colenso's work. It has therefore not 
been inserted in the Appendices ; but extracts are here given which will show 
the general attitude of the writer's mind, as well as the great ability of the 
article. 

f2 



68 EDWARD BOWEN 

' searching the Scriptures ' has been pre-eminently the work of 
writers who have bowed with some reservation to their authority. 
' The Bible as it is, and its interpretation as it was ! ' Such, if we 
may parody a modern party watchword, is the rallying cry of too 
much English divinity. It is a maxim from which little light can 
spring, and in which all superstition may lie hid. In the stir and 
tumult of critical controversy, amid the harvests of fresh knowledge 
that are springing up in Germany and England, in face of the 
patience, zeal, and courage of the pioneers of theological labour, a 
large party of our Churchmen claim ostentatiously, like the faded 
constitutionalists of France, to have forgotten nothing and learnt 
nothing. And yet action is so much better than inaction, progress 
than inertia, that knowledge is cheaply purchased at the risk of 
some rash caprice. Let men have freedom of inquiry, of speech, 
and of thought, and leave the consequences to the future. The 
first article in the creed of every friend of intellectual progress 
should be, that conservatism in intellectual questions is the head 
and front of error. 

The Reformation, the writer observes, had brought with it 
a great shock, for it had necessitated the surrender of the 
belief in the infallibility of the Church ; but the surrender 
of the belief in the infallibility of the Bible would be a shock 
which was no less tremendous. And yet it was one which 
needs must come, and the time had arrived for ' speaking 
out,' since silence and reticence were ceasing to be in any 
way possible. There were, indeed, not a few who would 
welcome a frank expression of the truth, and who would be 
encouraged by it to throw off the mask which they felt con- 
strained to wear. But whether welcome or unwelcome, the 
truth must out, and it had better be told with candour and 
sincerity. 

It becomes more and more impossible every day to screen a 
conviction of the mistakes contained in the Bible by a general 
profession of reverence for its majesty and beauty. We are not 
speaking of what we do not know, when we assert that a general 
liberty to profess such views as those of the Bishop of Natal would 
be hailed with delight by numbers of half-hypocritical students — 
clergymen and laymen alike — who at present are contented to wait 
and see their liberation coming, and are afraid to raise a hand to 
seize it. The ' Essays and Reviews,' with all their faults of rudeness 



A MEMOIE 69 

and rashness, did this great service — that they roused the public 
from its slumber. As one instance of progress hardly less remark- 
able than that of Bishop Colenso, we may take a writer whom 
he frequently quotes on the reactionary side of the debated 
questions. Seven years ago Dr. Kalisch published his Commentary 
on Exodus ; and with considerable ingenuity, and apparent can- 
dour, he defended the authority of the text, and refuted the 
objections of adversaries. Three years later Genesis appeared, 
and in the preface there is this remarkable passage : ' The convic- 
tion of the surpassing importance of the book has strengthened us 
to face the numerous difficulties of a conscientious interpretation.' 
In other words, the author had made up his mind to speak out. 
And the difference in value between the two Commentaries is such 
as might have been expected from the change. 

Of Bishop Colenso's book itself, the reviewer speaks 
highly. ' It is courteous, truthful, and reverent.' He enters 
at some length into the Bishop's arguments, emphasising 
the popular character of the volume and the effectiveness 
which such a characteristic supplies : 

He has mastered his brief well, knows its strong points, under- 
stands the men he is talking to, lets slip no advantage, and ends 
by creating an impression on his hearers which a far abler or more 
subtle pleader might strive in vain, with all his ingenuity, to 
produce. As it is, he makes few blunders ; but it may be fairly 
said, that if his book had been more learned it would very probably 
have been less effectual. 

The writer then goes on, after dwelling somewhat upon 
the historical inconsistencies in the Pentateuch, to express his 
assent to the theory of composite authorship as affording the 
necessary key to the various difficulties. The Pentateuch 
does not come from the Mosaic age — that fact criticism puts 
beyond all doubt. So too it can be shown to contain evident 
and undeniable inaccuracies : 

It follows that we have a right to consider it freely. And now 
what reason is there which obliges us to look at it as of a totally 
different nature, as belonging to a different order of literature, from 
the literature of any other country ? It is different in many respects 
no doubt. It has a higher antiquity, imparts more valuable in- 
formation, and is inspired with grander ideas. But why should it 



70 EDWAED BOWEN 

be different in kind ? It is written in human language, reveals 
human sympathies and passions, embodies human imagination and 
poetry. The thoughts of other nations in the earliest ages clothed 
themselves in legend ; why should we not allow that those of the 
Jews did the same ? ' The ass said unto Balaam,' ' Bos locutus ' — 
where is the wide interval between the two assertions, beyond the 
fact, which we readily allow to the credit of the Jew, that his 
representation of the marvellous times of old bears a higher stamp 
of moral and religious earnestness ? The gradual change in the 
tone of the earlier books of Scripture is exactly similar to that of 
the primitive records of all nations ; it begins with pure myths — 
surely few will deny that the material Garden of Eden, with its 
fruit of the tree of knowledge, is, whatever its import be, a myth 
— some idea of good and evil, happiness and sorrow, enshrined in 
a framework of physical and unreal circumstances. Gradually it 
advances through the legendary stage, where true and solid history 
is blended with the subjective colouring of a period which thinks it 
unsuitable to the dignity of past ages to represent them as exactly 
like the present ; finally, it comes down to the stage when facts are 
given as they are, with only the errors that accident or imperfect 
information introduces. How genuine, how real, the offspring of 
the national mind appears, if viewed in this light ! No one who 
has not tried can tell the delight with which the critic, when he has 
once thrown off the cramping influence of a fancied superhuman 
infallibility, enters into the study of the sacred narrative, as some- 
thing with which he can freely sympathise, and sees in the early 
history of the Hebrew race a field for the exercise of all the in- 
genuity, patience, and skill, which the stories of Greece and Borne 
have for ages monopolised to themselves. 

The last pages of the review are also full of interest, both 
on account of their subject-matter and their literary beauty, 
and may be quoted in their entirety : 

Do we, then, mean to assert, it may be asked, that the earlier 
books of the Jews are a mere tissue of fable and falsehood ? 
Certainly not. No race has given to the world such insight into 
primitive history, or inspired it with so lofty a religious spirit. 
Compare it with the Vedas ; the early traditions of a race akin to 
ourselves are worthless by the side of the records of this Semitic 
people, whose history is the only history, and their poetry the only 
poetry, that millions of Christians have ever read or heard. Pour 
thousand years ago, one family, the sons of Abraham, who traced 



A MEMOIE 71 

their origin to the plains of the Euphrates, separated themselves 
from the Canaanites, perhaps their kinsmen, and carved out their 
history for themselves. All we know of their religious institutions 
at that early period is, that they, with some few others, of whom 
but a trace is left, served the Most High God. The necessities and 
chances of an Arab life made them dwellers for a time in Egypt, 
the land of civilisation and culture. Of their hegira from that 
house of bondage, the genius of their leader, the rapid organisation 
which he planted among their still half-savage tribes, the wild life 
which they led for years in the country south and east of Jordan, 
the long struggle by which they won their land — tradition only, 
which yet left the name of Moses to lie dormant among them for 
centuries, and a few fragmentary documents, preserved the mar- 
vellous record. But it was handed down among them with a 
fidelity which lasted through centuries of trouble and anarchy, 
that the God whom they served had led His people like sheep, and 
done wonders in the field of Zoan. It is this belief, this deter- 
minate monotheism, the sacred heirloom of the tribe, which 
gives to the political history of Israel its wonderful charm and 
interest. For a change came quickly over the temper of the nation. 
In what way the kingly spirit and the centralising tendencies of 
the priesthood struggled against the old simplicity of worship and 
government, we have but here and there a trace. In the conflicts 
of Samuel and Saul, maintained in spirit through generations of 
kings and prophets, we have here these two elements at work — the 
element of political order and religious ordinance, and the element 
of patriarchal loyalty to the Theocracy. David, the most wonderful 
character of Jewish history, after long warfare, and not without 
the aid of foreign body-guards, usurped and held the kingdom, and 
to some extent reconciled the two. But succeeding ages show the 
same struggle again. Ceremony and system — the Scylla of a nation 
which is in peril of losing the early vividness of its faith — battled 
with fanaticism, its Charybdis. Priests against prophets — we know 
which side our European sympathies will take. Not that the 
priestly spirit had not its good side ; it was for political progress, 
for order, for literature. The devotional spirit, which it combined 
with its own ritualism and engrafted on the fervour of its oppo- 
nents, shows itself in the loftiness of Jeremiah, and the impassioned 
oratory of Deuteronomy. But the prophets were the salt of the 
Hebrew nation. When liberal alliances would have endangered 
the faith of the nation, these aristocrats of religious purity de- 
nounced them in words of fire. When a corrupt priestcraft held 
up its sacrifices and cleansings for a people to fall down and 



72 EDWARD BOWEN 

worship, it was they who tore the veil from its hypocrisies, and 
claimed the sacrifice of the heart. And in the end, when the 
miserable and defeated nation saw no hope or refuge left for their 
ambition, and were ready to bow down to the idols which it had 
been their ancestral mission to denounce, it was they who held up 
Messianism before their weary eyes, that never-failing solace of 
the oppressed, and even dared to proclaim, in lieu of their earthly 
sovereignty, a spiritual supremacy of the world, and a kingdom 
that should never pass away. So runs the history of the race 
who seem, more than all others in the world, to have lived indeed 
in earnest. They are our religious forefathers ; their old records 
have a meaning for us, and the very poetry which covers them is 
almost sacred to our eyes. To condemn them to oblivion would 
be to sacrifice much more than the mere tale of the journeys and 
battles of a tribe. They are the treasures of a nation of whose 
mission in the world we ourselves have reaped the fruit. ' If I 
forget thee, Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.' 

And yet Christianity, civilisation, labour, have educated us to 
see the defects of what we so highly prize. We miss, as it is 
natural we should, severity of historic truth in a nation in whom 
the critical faculty absolutely had no existence ; and we detect 
unworthy ideas of the Deity and His government in the writings 
of men whom it needed a higher faith to purify and exalt. The 
result is, that of the exact nature of the events recorded, the historic 
reality of many details, the extent to which fact has become mixed 
with legend, we must patiently remain in ignorance. A ' mythic ' 
theory has tried to sift this, as other narratives, and failed ; pure 
rationalism has tried, and with no better success. No one who 
has studied Exodus with care will deny that much of it is true. 
A conscientious inquiry makes it evident that part of it is not. 
Where the line is to be drawn, how far we may implicitly trust 
the record, no labour can with certainty determine. Here, as 
elsewhere, the truest philosophy will be the first to confess its 
own impotence. 

There is one school of writers from whose influence English 
theology may specially pray to be delivered. Open intolerance, 
stubborn prejudice, are obstacles which may be attacked with 
simple arguments, and from a sure footing. The most useful 
auxiliary to the cause of reactionary interpretation is that tone of 
mingled patronage and contempt which implies an involuntary 
respect for the theories to which outward circumstances alone 
necessitate an apparent opposition. There are some writers 
whose views are just liberal enough to add additional zest to 



A MEMOIR 73 

their hatred of intellectual thoroughness. So far as they know the 
truth, the truth has made them slaves. It is a poor compromise 
between conscience on the one hand and literary obligations on 
the other, to imply an obscure assent to an opinion, and make 
up for it by abusing its advocate. Writers in such a position are 
forced into a dogmatism which betrays itself by its very acrimony. 
To urge that Dr. Colenso's book is worthless because some , texts 
are quoted inaccurately, shows feebleness of judgment. To infer 
that because he states questions in detail, his arguments must 
therefore be superficial, indicates want of logical power. To 
blame the bishop for publicly supporting a view, and at the same 
time to hint its truthfulness, is an inconsistency which argues 
either dullness or hypocrisy, or both. Such writers may be simply 
told, that the contempt which they profess recoils on them with 
augmented force from the candid students of theology. Even 
their half-hearted and disguised support brings little credit to the 
cause of honesty and courage. Not with such weapons as these, 
nor with such champions to lead the fight, is the battle of progress 
and of religious liberty to be fought. 

The mass of Englishmen would be surprised if they knew how 
tumultuously the spirit of rebellion against religious dogmatism, 
and specially the dogma of Biblical infallibility, is seething in the 
breasts of men who yet shrink from notoriety and the odium 
which it brings. As a body, the educated world has discarded 
these notions already. Among the younger generation of students 
the Bible is freely regarded as open to unfettered criticism. It is 
only in public and in print that they fear to be candid ; among 
one another they take the questions for granted. Religious liberty 
is the watchword of the tacit understanding which prevails in 
literary society on the subject. For severe criticism all men have 
not the leisure or the inclination ; but upon the right to criticise, 
and the general result of this particular discussion, the writers 
and thinkers of this nation are in an accordance of which the 
dogmatists little dream. It is not a healthy state of things. 
It is a bad thing that the students should be so, far ahead 
of the actors in the world ; and it presses with terrible weight 
upon those who are newly setting out on the path of study. 
The sense of encountering at every onward step the mandate of 
opinion and authority, the consciousness that the road to Biblical 
investigation is paved with anathemas, bears more heavily on the 
candid inquirer than we care to picture. For that terror, that 
agony, which rolls with overwhelming pain upon so many minds 
when they first are forced to examine the truth of what they have 



74 EDWARD BOWEN 

been taught, the fatal prejudices of past generations are respon- 
sible. Perhaps there is no suffering in the world more keen than 
religious doubt. May Heaven forgive those who, by overloading 
belief and stifling inquiry, make its pangs more severe ! ' A shell 
shot into the fortress of the- soul! Cast it out! ' cries episcopal 
placidity. ' Doubt manfully on, till labour brings conviction,' 
we reply. He who ' despiseth not the sighing of a contrite heart, 
nor the desire of such as be sorrowful,' will care as much for 
the distresses of honest scepticism as for the panics of startled 
orthodoxy. 

' These difficulties are left as a trial of our faith.' From our child- 
hood up we have ever regarded that as a cruel and wicked fallacy. 
Doubts are to be solved either by intellectual or by moral means. 
If by intellectual reasoning, the issue cannot depeud upon 
religious faith ; if by moral determination, we reject with all the 
emphasis of which we are capable the doctrine that there is any 
other virtue which can enter into the examination of a contro- 
versial problem than honesty, energy, and perseverance. Yes : 
perhaps they are given to us as a trial of faith, to see if we have 
strength to work them out. That courage and trust can be but 
faint which shrink from inquiry through dread of its uncertain 
issue. Let us repay God's gift of intellect by honest and trustful 
use of it. • Fear indeed hath torment ; but'perfect love casteth out 
fear.' 

There are some who look into these questions, some who read 
this treatise of the bishop, who will feel, as they concede a reluc- 
tant assent to its arguments, that the prop of life has suddenly been 
taken from them. They will think, sadly enough, that if the 
Book on which they had learnt to depend for strength and solace 
is now withdrawn from their adoration, there is nothing left to fill 
its place. For years perhaps they have hung on its pages with 
rapture : they have yielded implicit obedience to its laws ; they 
have fled to its promises for comfort ; they have trusted to its 
sentences for wisdom. Now it seems as if a heartless criticism 
were stepping in between them and their God, and robbing them 
of all that is precious in the world. As the awful divinity of its 
pages seems to fade away, they fancy that the air they breathe 
seems colder, and the scenes they gaze on less bright. The 
newer interpretations may be true, the old theories may turn out 
mistaken ; but it is all that they have had to bear them through 
the manifold trials of life. Like Sir Bedivere, they seem to step 
onward into a world that knows them not. 



A MEMOIR 75 

' And I, the last, go forth companionless, 
And the days darken round rne, and the years, 
Among new men, strange faces, other minds.' 

So he it. ' God fulfils Himself in many ways.' To such as these 
a superhuman record may have heen the fit instrument to lead 
them through the perilous journey of the world ; none the less 
must those, who live with the lahours of the past and their own 
consciences to guide them, tread boldly wherever their judgment 
leads. The camps are not hostile ; the paths are not divergent. 
Or, if human passions and the ignorance that is in us bring 
trouble and enmity for a time between those who profess each to 
fight for truth, there is yet a unity that lies deeper than their 
differences ; there is a harmony which in the sight of Heaven their 
discords cannot avail to drown ; there is a sympathy which, 
beyond the feuds of criticism and the jarring subtleties of debate, 
binds together those who labour for the same high calling, and 
name the same holy name. 

The second of these theological essays appeared in the 
October number of the same year (1863), and is, as has heen 
said, professedly a review of Dr. Davidson's ' Introduction 
to the Old Testament,' though it travels over much more 
ground than the work of a single author. 1 The interest, the 
reviewer says, in Biblical criticism is increasing in England, 
though it is by no means fully developed, and we are in this 
respect much behind the Germans, among whom there is a 
larger liberty of investigation and a deeper appreciation of 
the difficulty of the problem than among ourselves. 

Here, it is well understood, when a theological professor sits 
down to write a book, that he has some cause to advocate. There, 
it is charitably supposed that he wishes to elucidate the subject. 
Here a clergyman is considered as competent to deal with a dis- 
puted topic if he is a good man and keeps his Sunday schools 
together. There it is believed to be necessary to have examined 
the controversy with care. 

Neither have we in England sufficiently realised the 
importance of a division of labour. The secret of German 

1 In this case also it has not been thought necessary to insert the essay — 
much of which is occupied with a discussion of the critical question as it was 
forty years ago — among the Appendices. The quotations will give a sufficient 
idea of its general bearing and value. 



76 EDWAED BOWEN 

success is very largely due to the prevalence of specialism. 
' Every one of the great names that are mentioned in connec- 
tion with theological progress can be set down and classified 
in his own peculiar niche in history.' 

The reviewer then proceeds to pass under very rapid and 
brief notice some of the greater names in German research 
into the Old Testament, among them Michaelis, ' the thorough 
German, the man of hard, solid learning, whose researches 
into the details of Mosaism are far from obsolete now ; ' 
Herder, of whom it was said that * to listen to him was like 
beholding the red dawn amid the moonlight ; ' Eichhorn, ' the 
model of a critic, serious, acute, calm ; ' Bohr, ' the German 
Stanley ; ' Schleiermacher, who ' exalted the individual 
religious life above the formularies of belief ; ' De Wette, 
' actuated by a keen critical sagacity and recommended by 
a blameless life ; ' Hitzig, ' whose study of the prophets has 
been invaluable ; ' Bunsen, ' whose skill it was to pursue 
doctrinal theology as a theologian, ecclesiastical theories as a 
politician, and Scriptural studies as a critic, and to know how 
to keep them apart ; ' and Kuenen, ' whose eminence in the 
critical world is second to few.' 

Last of all* and isolated from the rest, far above them in 
mastery of Oriental language and ideas, acute, obstinate, ap- 
parently almost reckless in a conjecture, but indestructible in an 
argument, of keen sensibility, poetic temperament, profound piety, 
relentless in self-assertion, quick in apprehension, untiring in 
patience, stands Ewald of Gottingen, foremost of German critics. 

As regards the alleged orthodox reaction, the writer simply 
denies that there is any measure of truth in the asser- 
tion, except as regards ' the later Berlin school, which is a 
semi-political movement, strongly conservative, supported 
by the court party, ultra-Lutheran, ecclesiastical, and even 
sacramental in its tendency.' Such a school has for its object 
to silence both political liberalism and Scriptural criticism, 
but it has produced only one name of importance — that of 
Kurz. 

The rise of a school of critical inquiry in France is next 
touched on, though its issues have not — in the reviewer's 



A MEMOIE 77 

opinion — been as yet of any special value or moment, 
though it doubtless has an honourable future before it. 

One sees a disposition to conquer all theology in one essay, an 
impatient eagerness for generalisation, which will sober down in 
time. Le voild, le chameau, is too much the motto even of 
theology in Prance. It appears perhaps more than anywhere else 
in the spirit of true French eclecticism, which insures complete- 
ness of theory at the cost of elaborateness of proof. The references 
are constantly not verified; and, indeed, it is not always that 
there are any references to verify. But these are matters of 
detail. The French school, it cannot be doubted, will soon have 
made itself a name ; and it has now the merit of being the only 
school of known theologians which does not habitually condescend 
to invective. One of its leaders declared in England not long 
ago, that the recriminations of English polemics were to him 
perfectly surprising, in contrast with the mutual forbearance with 
which such topics are usually treated by his countrymen. 

The writer then turns to England. He refers some- 
what slightingly to ' Essays and Reviews.' ' The authors of 
the new volume wished simply to make Scriptural inquiries 
popular ; and if they had but adopted a conciliatory tone, or 
had dressed heresy in orthodox language, they might have 
escaped the storm.' Of Dr. Davidson's volumes, however, 
i.e. of the volumes more especially under notice, he speaks 
highly, except as regards their literary style and the constant 
presence of an unnecessarily polemical tone. He goes on to 
trace, in as much detail as is possible in a magazine article, 
the results which have, in his judgment, been definitely 
achieved by criticism, and he adds in tabular form a 
summary of the history of Old Testament literature. He 
then proceeds to give a sketch of ' the religious influences 
which would be likely to act upon the literature of the 
Jews.' This portion of the essay is too long to quote in its 
entirety, nor does it lend itself to illustration by means 
of excerpts, while the ground which is traversed by it 
is thoroughly familiar to Biblical! I students. It must be 
sufficient to say of this resume that it is written throughout 
from the full modern standpoint, and that it is characterised 
alike by the author's remarkable power of condensation and 



78 EDWAED BOWEN 

exposition, his firm grasp of leading principles, his complete 
knowledge of his subject, and his unsurpassed capacity for 
clear and lucid expression. At its close the writer continues 
— and the passages bring a memorable essay to a vigorous 
and impressive termination — as follows : 

We have seen that the history of the Jews, as far as its bearing 
upon their literature is concerned, is essentially a history of 
religious ideas. As such, it will never be successfully treated by 
anyone who is unable in some degree to appreciate such ideas 
himself. But, on the other hand, persons of the most fervent 
piety may read these writings, and arrive at a totally false esti- 
mate of the story they contain. Any method short of that by 
which a rigorous scrutiny is exercised upon every statement, must 
be as imperfect as it would be in treating the history of Rome or 
England. Professor Stanley has lately published some lectures on 
' The History of the Jewish Church,' of which, though with every 
respect for the writer, critics have nevertheless the right to make 
some complaint. After calmly reviewing the present position of 
sacred literature in this country, Professor Stanley seems to have 
determined upon a distinct line of action. It is that which he him- 
self is fond of attributing to his prophets — the position of a mediator 
between old and new, a harmoniser and reconciler of different 
modes of thought. He will present criticism to the world in as 
favourable a guise as possible ; he will shock no prejudices ; he 
will even court good-will by a reticence on doubtful points. We 
do not say that he does not do good — every learned and sincere 
man must. But we do say that it is hardly fair upon those who 
do not profess to take every historical statement of the Bible for 
granted, that he should attempt to veil under courtly forms of 
language the fact that he does not do so himself. It is as though 
a history of the Jews meant a history of facts, while a ' History of 
the Jewish Church ' meant a series of photographs from Palestine, 
taken in a pious spirit. Mr. Kingsley, whom we quote as a 
preacher, and not as a critic, takes something of the same ground 
in his recently published ' Sermons on the Pentateuch.' Good 
plain people, he says, are moved with no critical misgivings ; 
'when they read the stoiy of the Exodus, their hearts answer, 
" This is right. This is the God whom we need. This is what 
ought to have happened. This is time ; for it must be true." Let 
comfortable people, who know no sorrow, trouble their brains as 
to whether sixty or 600,000 righting men came out of Egypt with 



A MEMOIR 79 

Moses.' Mr. Kingsley speaks (in the preface to his book) of his 
happiness in having enjoyed a Cambridge education, which could 
teach him how to treat Old Testament criticism aright. "We 
wonder whether it was at Cambridge that he learnt that an 
individual judgment on the moral fitness of a narrative is an 
adequate intellectual criterion of its truth. We wonder whether 
it was at the University, or since leaving it, that he first began to 
think it consistent with charity to speak of critics who differ from 
him as ' comfortable ' — dead, that is, to religious feeling. The 
first of these errors is a manifest fallacy ; the second is a grievous 
wrong. Both Mr. Kingsley and Dr. Stanley seem to us to begin 
at the wrong end of their subject. Both seem to urge upon their 
readers that the moral of the story is what chiefly deserves atten- 
tion. It may be so; but how can we tell what the moral of a 
story is if we do not know what the facts are? Mr. Kingsley 
writes that the Jews heard the sound of a trumpet exceeding 
strong, and a voice ' most Divine and yet most human.' What 
does it mean ? How can a sound be Divine and human at the 
same time ? Did the Israelites hear with their outward ears the 
vibrations caused by a current of air passing through a metallic 
tube, or did they not ? Some critics seem to think that there are 
portions of religious history too solemn to be related according to 
the common forms of narrative. It will soon, in all probability, 
be affirmed that religion is too complex a subject to be treated by 
the ordinary rules of grammar. 

Professor Stanley's History has nevertheless received a high 
encomium in the last few months from one writer whose name 
ought to carry weight. In eulogising the semi-orthodox professor, 
and attacking the outspoken bishop, Mr. Matthew Arnold asserts 
a distinction between edification and instruction — the former being 
for the unenlightened many, the latter for the enlightened few ; 
and he declares that every book ought to aim at one of these two 
objects exclusively. Without minutely considering how far each 
of the two writers above mentioned purposely set themselves to 
either task, our objections to the theory may be very briefly stated. 
In the first place, it allows no means by which the enlightenment 
can penetrate to the masses, and assumes that upon theological 
questions the few must always think differently from the many. 
Yet ; from an historical point of view, it is remarkable that the work 
which has been most famous in this century in connection with 
religious inquiry, the ' Leben Jesu,' was intended mainly for the 
critics, and not for the multitude. In the second place, the theory 
involves, as far as we can see, the obligation upon the learned 



80 EDWAED BOWEN 

edifier of being deliberately and wilfully uncandid. And, finally, 
we utterly deny that a writer is bound in every case to put upon 
himself any such alternative as that stated, or, indeed, any one 
set purpose at all. Let there be free trade in thought, as there is 
a free market in buying and selling. Such limitations as these 
are the old-fashioned props of error. If anyone had objected on 
the appearance of M'Culloch's ' Commercial Dictionary ' that it 
was a bad book, because it neither enriched the British farmers 
nor promoted civil liberty among the populations of the European 
continent, the argument would seem to be precisely as fair a 
criticism of the dictionary as that which Mr. Arnold brings against 
the Bishop of Natal. 

It is strange that, in a country of freedom, it should be so 
difficult to say these things aloud. The virtue that we want is 
that of courage, and the places where it is chiefly wanted are the 
places where it ought to flourish most. The time when the mind 
is most plastic, most active, most splendidly versatile, is the time 
that a young man spends at college ; and here, if anywhere, it 
might be expected that the air would be congenial to free study. 
We believe that it needs a considerable knowledge of the English 
universities fully to appreciate the intellectual cowardice which 
characterises the older portion of their members. The exceptions 
are notorious ; and it is in such a case as this that, in the true 
meaning of the phrase, the exceptions prove the rule. It would 
not be so well known who were the advocates of freedom, if the 
disposition to acquiesce in prejudice were not so widely predomi- 
nant. A young man at the university begins to think that the 
Flood was not historical, or that the maledictions of David are not 
couched in a very forgiving spirit. One set of advisers speak to 
him in tones of severity; like the Brahmin who crushed the 
microscope which first revealed to him the living insects in his 
vegetable food, they urge him to turn from such thoughts at once, 
and to believe by an effort of the will. Should he be man enough 
to resist this counsel, there are others who will advise him in 
friendly tones to fly to action as a remedy for doubt ; a better 
frame of mind will come, if he will but do his duty and shut his 
eyes. It is a suggestion which implicitly assumes the monstrous 
hypothesis, that the best way of arriving at truth is by deliberately 
abstaining from the search for it. Adolphe Monod was so advised, 
and Dr. Arnold ; and they followed the advice — with more or less 
effect. Perhaps the inquirers may yield to their incessant tempta- 
tions, and maintain and subscribe and swear whatever college and 
university and church set before them. There are many who do 



A MEMOIE 81 

so, and who never recover their freedom again. Ecclesiastical 
authority closes upon them — an authority incompatible with 
independent thought. Soon the questioner begins to care less for 
the old questions, theory is swallowed up in action : he is happy, 
he wishes nothing further ; the world is not the better for the 
intellect God gave him to use. Contentment, the great vice of 
middle age, settles gradually upon him — a vice all the more fatal 
from its being so often called a virtue. 

Anyone who embraces, on the other hand, the task of candidly 
working out for himself the religious problems before him, will 
find it a harder task, even if it be a higher one. It is a task to 
which our country now emphatically summons men who are not 
afraid to think. At the commencement of one of his essays, Eenan 
speaks of a painter who would never attempt except upon his knees 
a head of the Virgin or her Son. Some such intense reverence for 
the issues before him a theological critic may well feel ; to pause 
and adore seems but the fitting preface to the study. But it is not 
a pause of fear, or a reverence which unmans the intellect. The 
effect of the inquiry is not an impious one, and free thinking is, in 
the simple meaning of the term, the highest gift of humanity. The 
true critic is one who will deem the most perfect humility to 
lie in the abandonment of prejudice, and the highest faith in 
the conviction that truth will win. He will have intellectual 
labour while others are at rest, and perplexities where others 
cannot feel them. His aims and hopes will not be understood, his 
candour will seem presumption, and his courage ill will to what is 
holy. Persecution may not attack him, but social suspicion will. 
He will work as one whose reward is not before his eyes, and who, 
in giving up the secure assumptions which bring peace to others, 
has not sacrificed to God that which cost him nothing. Again 
and again he will be called on to surrender a fancied discovery, a 
treasured paradox, a literary revenge, a polemical retort. He will 
often pause on the brink of a theory, and summon all his self- 
restraint to aid him in the refusal to tread hastily on a tempting 
path. He will not believe, with the Dean of Carlisle, in the ' ever- 
deteriorating tendency of the unaided human intellect ; ' he will 
rather trust that good endeavours lead in the end to good results. 
And as he began his task for the sake of truth, and not for the 
sake of reputation, he will regard his conclusions as not his own, 
but given and offered to truth, and will support them no further 
for the sake of sustaining a thesis than he would maintain them 
for the sake of preserving a creed. Thus, with whatever lowliness 
of spirit and loftiness of determination he can, he will brave the 

G 



82 EDWAED BOWEN 

terrors of public opinion, and the more imposing terrors that lurk 
in the weakness of the human soul ; and will not doubt that in 
destroying a religious error, or making known a discovery of critical 
study, he is doing something, however small it be, to assist and 
educate his race. 

But the years 1859 to 1867 — years which may be divided 
off as constituting the first period of Edward Bowen's life 
as a Harrow master — produced no important contribution 
by him, with the exception of one essay, to the literature 
of his profession. Such a circumstance is no matter for 
surprise, much less for regret. Contributions might no 
doubt have been made by him which would have been 
striking as expositions of theory, unbalanced by experience ; 
but they could not have had the weight which attaches to his 
later workmanship. During these j^ears, however, and indeed 
somewhat early in them, he wrote a remarkable paper on 
'Punishments,' which was read to a society known as 'The 
United Ushers,' or more shortly and colloquially as ' The 
U.U.'s.' The paper made a great impression upon those who 
first heard or read it, nor did his maturer views upon the 
subject differ materially from those which he expresses in it ; 
but it was obviously put together by him without any idea of 
giving it a circle materially wider than that for which it was 
prepared ; and though its author sent it to a few friends, he 
expressed a strong desire that it should not be given to the 
outside public. Under these circumstances the essay has 
not been included among the Appendices to this memoir ; 
at the same time the prohibition need not now be so 
rigidly interpreted as to exclude all reference to it or any 
extracts from it. 

The essayist lays down these axioms : 

1. ' Faults ought not to be punished according to their 
real moral enormity.' 

2. Punishment for ' acute disorders ' must be effective. 

3. Don't have secondary punishments. 

In connection with the first of these he points out that 
offences arise partly because of the artificial system in opera- 
tion at a school. He takes in illustration what was — at one 



A MEMOIR 83 

period, at any rate, of Dr. Vaugban's regime — a very common 
breach of discipline. 

I was much struck once by a master now present saying to 
mo that throwing stories was wrong, and that he wished the boy 
to know that he, the master, thought it was, and punished it 
because it was. I can't agree, though I have thought over it as 
candidly as I can. It is, I rather contend, only wrong because the 
days are evil : because our small state of society is confessedly 
and of set purpose a little awry. Hence arbitrary rules, codes 
enacted to satisfy direct and visible wants, and not following 
natural laws. In short, school punishments are, even more than 
those of a nation, really and bond fide separable into nuila per se 
and mala prohibila, which run, of course, into one another, but 
are different. I hope I shall be forgiven for having dwelt on this, 
for I probably am not the only teacher who has wondered whether 
the don, the master who frowns at the stone -thrower, has really 
right on his side. So far, then, I uphold the view that we must 
conform to the boys' idea that some things are punished because 
they are wrong, and others because they must be punished. 

As regards the second axiom — the importance of effective 
punishment for really grave offences — it was, in his view, 
a choice between corporal punishment and imprisonment, 
'which the French don't like, but are obliged to use.' 
Degradation in school rank would, he thinks, prove to be only 
partially sufficient, because in such a penalty there is an 
element of fictitiousness and conventionality, while what is 
wanted in punishment of this sort is that ' the boy must 
care for it and be afraid of it, when he weighs it against the 
temptation.' 

The question of secondary punishments is dealt with at 
greater length, and it is here that the essay is perhaps most 
brilliant and most suggestive. It approaches the matter from 
the standpoint of a form-master. As has been said, Edward 
Bowen's motto with regard to these penalties was, ' Eschew 
them,' since he considered that most secondary punishments 
which were set were practically unnecessary, and that resort 
to them was only a sign of weakness. 

In secondary matters, the master ought only to punish with 
the distinct object of getting what he wants, and because he thinks 

g 2 



84 EDWARD BOWEN 

this the best or the only way. This shall not happen, ought to be 
the motto. Acting in this spirit, it does not matter much whether 
the punishments are great or small. For such faults as petulance, 
forgetfulness, venial disobedience, the best punishment being 
nothing ; the second best is to be sought for in a fertile invention. 
Things which are extraordinary should be dealt with in a wayward 
fashion. Jones for the fortieth time will not bring a pen to school. 
I have tried all the arts of persuasion : what shall I do ? Make 
him come a quarter of an hour before school every day for a week 
with a pen in his hand ; or write an account of the pens of the 
ancients from the ' Dictionary of Antiquities ; ' or buy out of his 
pocket-money half-a-dozen boxes of pens, and give them to me to 
keep for him ; or threaten, but don't do it, to give all the form an 
extra stanza of repetition next time he forgets. But the one thing 
I won't do, is to make a rule that all boys who don't bring pens 
shall write some lines of Virgil. And I can hardly conceive a 
case of the kind in which I wouldn't let the boy off if he particu- 
larly wished. Of course, if he had done it on purpose, it would 
be different ; then he wouldn't wish. If thy pupil trespass against 
thee seven times a day, and seven times a day come to thee 
saying, ' I repent,' forgive him. 

But as regards all punishments, there is one golden rule 
to be borne in mind : ' Boys ought hardly eve?' to be 
punished against their will.' If a master is wise and just, and 
shows that he does truly care about the offence, in ninety- 
nine cases out of the hundred the culprit will acquiesce in 
his sentence as reasonable and proper. 

Nor did these years see even the first of Edward 
Bowen's Harrow songs. Mr. Farmer, whose name will 
always be closely connected with this famous series, had, it 
is true, come to Harrow in 1862 ; and in 1864 Mr. Westcott 
had written ' Io Triumphe ' for him, and had followed it 
up by other Latin songs. Mr. Bradby also contributed both 
Latin and English words before 1867 ; but Edward Bowen 
did not as yet take any part. There are, however, during 
this period two brilliant compositions of his, written for the 
' Harrow Gazette' (a local newspaper), the first being some 
lines in connection with the Volunteer movement of 1859-60 ; 
and the second being a set of verses upon the election of an 
organist for the parish church. 



A MEMOIE 85 

The lines upon the Volunteer movement are dated 
March 1, 1860, and are descriptive, as will be seen, of the 
struggles of local recruits. 

THE 'EIGHTEENTH MIDDLESEX' 

Sweet sleep attend that patriot, visions fair, 
Whose aims are lofty, and his shoulders square ! - 
Soft be the couch where rest, in glorious ease, 
The feet turned out at sixty good degrees ! 
Not we the slaves whose venal ardour chose 
The shining shilling and the clumsy clothes ; 
Not ours the hearts that, armed for just defence, 
Fight for their country's honour — and its pence ; 
The touch of pay is not the thing to vex 
The conscience of the Eighteenth Middlesex. 
A pure ambition prompts our backward wheels, 
In honour's steps we crush each other's heels, 
And in the path where Wolfe and Wellesley trod, 
Duty stands smiling on the awkward squad. 

All have one aim ; but as to skill — I pause. 
I don't believe Jones ever will do ' fours ; ' 
Brown should remember that it hardly does 
To do ' left wheel,' when we do ' stand at huzz ! ' 
You Nokes, of course, were not in fault last night, 
'Twas Jones, not you, who thought his left his right. 
But then, — I hope I do not give offence, 
Some people haven't other people's sense ; 
Still, if mistrust of Smith your spirits drown, 
And total want of confidence in Brown ; 
If you do feel these nightly drills a bore, 
Your true right section is — to cut the corps. 
Leave glory's phantoms for the soldier's part, 
Find in some art of peace your ' peace of 'art ; ' 
Eesign at once all military show, 
Go the whole hog — and be the hog you go ! 

Strange sight, when first the rifleman with pain, 
Faces to right, then faces left again ; 
When first he learns, by force of lengthened use, 
The step that marks the soldier — and the goose ; 
And hears, in rapid speech and wondrous tone, 
The mighty issues of the short word ' wonn.' 



86 EDWAED BOWEN 

' The posture should be easy ' — oh, no doubt ! 
' The head upright — the chest thrown fully out.' 
Poor Binks ! a fearful picture of repose — 
Perhaps you'd like him now to touch his toes ! 
Pity the sorrows of a poor young swell, 
Too stiff to stoop, too loyal to rebel ; 
"With soul of iron, vest of cashmere, curst, 
Binks, in our Tuesday's practice, simply — burst ! 

And noble he who, strong in size and weight, 
Deems nought too arduous for a shape so great ; 
Let some their section grace with figures slim, 
In mass and breadth they will not rival him ; 
Let others easier bend the pliant knee, 
Not one is larger round the waist than he ! 
Bold he advances, and presents anew 
At every turn a fresh ' dissolving ' view ; 
Marks time like Nasmyth's hammer ; and around 
The dust is laid o'er twenty feet of ground ; 
Till calm fatigue, exhaustion all serene, 
Leaves standing not one stone — of his fifteen ! 

And yet, kind ladies, who may deign awhile 
To crown our dreary marchings with your smile ; 
Yet deem not that we try no pains to please, 
That hour has cramped our dinners, pinched our teas. 
At eight p.m. the first command is given, 
Enthusiastic people come at seven ; 
Rush from short meals which duty yet may sweeten, 
Our feelings Harrow'd, but our dinner Eaten. 
Then, hark ! the bugle calls. What feelings swell 
In Biffin at the sound he loves so well ! 
Turn de de de is ' forward,' Biffin knows, 
And diddy turn turn, diddy de, is ' close.' 
Then Stokes, with rapid steps and quiet smiles, 
Treads on the heels of unsuspecting Stiles ; 
And Stiles, dissembling vengeance, calmly pokes 
His errant elbow in the ribs of Stokes. 
That night they dream, if patriotic zeal 
Narrowed the ' extension motion ' of their meal, 
That myriad sergeants, frowning, all night stand, 
And thunder forth the strong, but strange, command, 
' Eight section, left form company ; meanwhile, 
Left, backwards double on the leading file ! ' 



A MEMOIR 87 

Oh muse, oh nymph, oh ministress of war, 
Whosever line embraces Eifle Corps ! 
Be kind to one who, though not used to sing, 
Has every wish to do the proper thing. 
Oh, when the varying mandate, random hurled, 
Confounds the finest senses in the world ; 
When Judgment owns her mastery less and less, 
And mind becomes a briery wilderness : 
Then let thy warning voice speed down the line, 
Stretch thy right hand, and tell me, which is mine ! 

The verses upon the election of an organist are three 
years later. It will be noticed that the name of Mr. Farmer 
— who had not as yet received any real recognition from the 
School authorities— appears in them. How the election went 
in the end is immaterial, nor need we attempt to determine 
what influence Edward Bowen's exceptional advocacy had 
upon the chances of his candidate ; but it ought to be stated 
that Mr. Gos, for whom he made his effort, was a hair- 
dresser in the town. 

ELECTION OP ORGANIST 

Vote for Gos ! Vote for Gos ! 

Why do the gentry look so cross ? 

Truefitt's rival and Handel's heir, 

He will play your organ and cut your hair ; 

Psalmody cannot afford the loss 

The town would suffer in losing Gos ! 

Vote for Gos ! Vote for Gos ! 

Twenty to one on the winning 'oss ! 

All the fine talk of the friends of the Vicar is 

Excellent food — for the lovers of liquorice, 

Flowers are best in their native moss ! 

Hang the intruder and vote for Gos ! 

Vote for Gos ! Vote for Gos ! 

Farmer and Flowers to Jericho toss ! 

Not in vain is the story told 

How for the hair-cutter Absalom polled : 

This way, gentlemen ! step across I 

This is the way to vote for Gos ! 



88 EDWAED BOWEN 

It was not, however, in English verses only that Edward 
Bowen's wit and gaiety found brilliant expression. In 1867 
he and the Eev. E. M. Young 1 jointly composed an amusing 
1 Vergilian ' eclogue — somewhat after the model of that in 
which Menalcas and Dainoetas compete for the heifer — upon 
the candidature of the Eev. F. W. Farrar and the Kev. E. H. 
Bradby — both of them assistant masters at Harrow — for 
the vacant headmastership of Haileybury. The honour of 
succeeding so distinguished a chief as the retiring head- 
master — the Eev. Arthur Butler — had drawn a large field of 
applicants, but Mr. Farrar and Mr. Bradby stood somewhat 
prominently out from among the others, and it was from the 
first probable that the choice of the governing body would 
fall, as it did, upon one or other of them. 2 Their rivalry 
excited considerable warmth of feeling among their colleagues 
and friends, and the heat of partisanship was increased by 
the even balance on the one hand of their claims, and on 
the other by the striking divergence of their temperaments. 
It was under these circumstances that the Eclogue was 
written ; and its delightful humour did not a little to soften 
the asperities of the contest. 

THYESIS. DAMCETAS 
Forte sub arguta betulae convenerat umbra 
Thyrsida Damoetas ; nostros quis nescit amicos ? 
Proxima qui summo curant prgesepia clivo, 
Ambo conjugiis prasstantes, prolibus arnbo ; 
5 Duxerat hie secum florem gregis, ille gemellos, 

Quorum nescit herus similem dignoscere lanam. 
Hos ego, dum lateo molli resupinus in herba, 
Versibus audivi paribus certare vicissim, 
Ferret uter virgam betulae de fronde recisam 
10 Daphnidis ; at sceptro discesserat ipse relicto. 

Alternis igitur se venditat unus et alter. 

T. Flos rubet in pratis ; pendens rubet arbore bacca ; 
Nobis suave rubent promissi ad pectora crines. 

1 At the time an assistant master at Harrow : afterwards headmaster of 
Sherborne ; and, at the time of his death, Eector of Bothbuiy and Honorary 
Canon of Newcastle. 

- Mr. Bradby was elected. Mr. Farrar was subsequently appointed to the 
headmastership of Marlborough in succession to Dr. Bradley. 



A MEMOIR 89 

D. Barbaras est, barbam qui sic fovet ; id bene discit, 
15 ' Linguaram ' inodice qui tinxit ' Origine ' mentem. 

T. Ut pereant vocum discrimina ! novimus ipsi 

Angliaca lepide disponere verba loquela. 
D. An tibi sic currunt, veluti vox nostra loquentis, 
Chryselephantino berylus distincta smaragdo ? 
20 T. At cantus pueris, at avenge aptavimus hymnos, 

Meque colonus amat, mea sunt huic omnia curse. 
D. Anglia me Scotique simul, puerique senesque, 
Et Batavi, et ponto discreta Columbia laudat. 
T. Jucundumque bonumque vocat me Roundelos ; ecquis 
25 Roundelon audivit nisi vera et sana loquentem ? 

D. Boppus amat nostros, nee despicit ipse libellos 

Grimmius ; ut non sit Germanis notior alter. 
T. Pan ovium custos ; gregis est custodia nobis 
Qui fibres curant, conchylia, gramina, muscas. 
30 D. Praeses et ipse fui ; quid tu mihi talia ? novi 
Omnia, post nomen cui litera trina legatur. 
T. Major ego, idcirco sapientior ; eque caballi 
Tergore despicio follem qui calce fatigant. 
D. Fortunate senex ! ergo tua crura manebunt ; 
35 Si, dum tu vectaris equis, ego vulnera quaero. 

T. Triste Gradus pueris ; fesso schola longa magistro ; 

Virga cuti ; cutibus mihi non intendere virgas. 
D. Dulce rudis pugili ; pueris absistere musa ; 
Musarum capiti mihi detraxisse coronam. 
40 T. Quod potui, stupido sexcentos ordine versus 

Imposui pensum Mopso ; eras Georgicon addam. 
D. O quoties et quae nequam peccavit Amyntas ! 

Cum faciam ferula, ni displicet, ipse venito. 
T. Die quibus in tectis interprete voce cuculus 
45 Soles occiduos et euntes computet horas ? 

D. Die quibus in tectis, et mox eris GEdipus alter, 
Parvulus incultae ludat cui nomen ericae ? 

Hie ego, me prodens, ' Desistite cantibus am bo ; 
Et betula tu dignus, et hie ; et quisquis honores 
50 Vel ferat a Camo pastor, vel ab Iside, tales. 

Vesper adest : sonat ses ; i, flos gregis, ite, geme lli.' 

5 MSS. omnes 'folium.' Veram lectionem restitui. 'Ge nielli' qui 
fuerint, varie disseruerunt interpretes. Quatuor fuisse affir mat Schol. 

19 Notaverint tirones, syllabarum in hoc versu quantitatem, et vocabulorum 

genera, poetam prse magnitudine sententiee parum curare. 

20 De colono vix liquet. Vide autem ne canendi magistrum quempiam 

scriptor per paronomasiam spectaverit. 



90 EDWAED BOWEN 

Of the correspondence of this decade of years — a corre- 
spondence which doubtless was at the time slight and brief 
enough — scarcely any relics remain. There are, however, a 
few letters to his old undergraduate friend, W. Sanmarez 
Smith — now (1902) Archbishop of Sydney — and of these 
three may perhaps be given as containing clear witness to 
the manner of man that the writer was. None of them are 
dated, but the first is stated by its author to be written at 
' the age of twenty-four,' and therefore belongs approximately 
to 1860 ; while the Archbishop has been able to attach dates 
to the others. 

London Road, Harrow. 

My dear Willie, — I am going through the great heap of letters 
which accumulated at the end of last term, when I had hardly 
time to read them intelligently. Yours is among them. I am 
sitting over the tire the first night of the half, while the cabs roll 
by with boys coming back late — and no work to do as yet. What 
if I try to answer your letter ? Probably it will be an infliction to 
you if I do. I know you rather dislike positive arguing ; I, on 
the other hand, rather like it, believing in dialectics as a great 
help to the search for truth. Not that I require you to answer 
my combativeness — which, if it seem ungracious, all I can say is, 
firstly it isn't really so, and secondly mag is arnica Veritas ! 

The scarlet cloth that rouses all that is tauriform in my nature 
is the idea of subordinating the intellectual part of one's nature to 
anything whatever. Why in the attempt to arrive at truth, which 
should be with everyone a lifelong labour, discard partially or 
wholly, or deliberately blunt, the only weapon by which truth is 
secured ? Why ? Because error is probable ? Imvio certain ; 
but if I did not consider intellect and ignorance to be antagonistic 
rather than the opposite, I should think very differently of our 
work in the world. Because the nature of man is not large 
enough to unite large mental and spiritual development ? Eather 
I trust the text which urges 

' That mind and soul, according well, 
May make one music as before, 
But vaster.' 

What business have we to question that every faculty was meant 
to be used to the full ? It is a kind of certainty with me that 
goes very near the roots of faith. ' Perfect love casteth out fear.' 



A MEMOIR 91 

I am deliberately determined to make the desire of high know- 
ledge no child's play, to trust the issues of honesty, to refuse to 
examine anything under heaven by the light of an eclipse of 
reason. Which of the two is more pleasing to the Father of 
Spirits, he who persuades himself to take things for granted 
which his own narrow views make him consider likely to be 'the 
right things to believe,' or he who deliberately strips himself, in 
entering upon high questions, of every prejudice, and blindness, 
and thought for his intellectual future, and renders to mind the 
things that are mind's? Which of the two 'enters the kingdom 
of God as a little child ' V 

But there is the question whether intellect is the only imple- 
ment in our hands for such a purpose. My own reply is un- 
hesitatingly, 'Yes.' What of faith? I cannot bring myself to 
think that any single fact, or collection of facts, of whatever 
importance they be, is seen best, and in its truest colours, by the 
simple process of shutting the eyes. I do not believe that faith has 
any relation whatever to a belief in facts. I should rather cling to it 
as something giving one very much more than facts — trust in the 
final victory of goodness and truth, love to the Spirit around and 
in one, confidence in the existence of a higher nature than this 
nature and a higher life surrounding this life. But to confound faith 
and opinion seems to me the heresy of heresies. No fact can be 
more than matter of opinion, nor any theory (i.e. doctrine). Every 
fact and doctrine is temporal, fleeting, imperfect. Faith is that by 
which we apprehend the real. He who believes a thing because 
others tell it him may believe what is true or he may not — the 
chances are enormously in favour of its being untrue — but in no 
case is it any credit to him simply to sacrifice his private judgment. 
It is not believing in God, it is believing in man ; and this extends 
to everything of the nature of prejudice, i>r a judicium, every 
' great principle which must at all hazards be defended,' every 
' doctrine which lies at the root of theology.' Apage, Sathana ! 
But he who believes a thing, or fancies he does, because he thinks 
it right to believe it, is simply in the position of one who forfeits 
his claim to manhood, who abdicates the status of a rational being. 
Beason, and reason alone, I consider the guide to inductive know- 
ledge. 

I shudder to think how often I have heard the questions, ' But 
where will you stop ? ' ' Where will this lead to ? ' Wherever 
God will — alkivov aikivov €?7re. I pray Him that I may no more 
shrink from intellectual duty through fear of the consequences 
than from moral. The consequences of blind reception of what is 



92 EDWAED BOWEN 

stated or written is at the present moment that the predominant 
religion of the world is Buddhism ; and a blind reception is that 
which receives from any other ground except intelligent opinion 
founded on examination. True that most of the world must 
receive blindly ; but it is matter for regret that it should be so, 
and increases the responsibility of those who are not obliged by 
want of education to do it. 

' Can you trust yourself ? ' No ; but my opinions must never- 
theless be my own and not another man's. I know I shall never 
arrive at perfect truth ; which of itself is a satisfactory proof to me 
that no opinion honestly arrived at is matter for blame to anyone, 
or the contrary. Nor do I mean that I am to take nothing as 
probable from the report of another. I only mean that I must 
do so with open eyes and solely under the guidance of Beason. 

Lastly, it may be said, ' You are too young to profess and 
propound crude views.' I reply that I do not propound them 
to the world. What I believe from day to day (for one must 
always be changing some small opinion or other), I express to 
those to whom I talk and write. I do not profess to be certain of 
any view, almost. But that is no reason for keeping my thoughts 
to myself. It wouldn't do to wait till one was certain of all 
things. Bnsticus c.vpcctat d-um dcfluat amnis. Error has a 
tendency to stereotype itself, one sees. And if young men were 
to be debarred from speaking because of crudity of opinion, views 
would be solid, it is true, beliefs would gain in firmness and 
symmetry, and in an appearance of appropriateness and adapta- 
tion to the world, but not nearly so much as they would lose in 
vigour and in the additional charm of truth that arises from dis- 
turbance and a stirring up of mind. 

For example, I believe that if it were suddenly discovered that 
the Bible was not entirely trustworthy, the amount of religious 
knowledge, virtue, spiritualness, would by this time five years 
have vastly increased. You will guess from my sa} T ing so that 
I am on the point of mentioning one strong view that I feel at the 
moment convinced of. I have taken lately to thinking that we have 
lost much from over- veneration of the Bible ; that it can be proved 
beyond question that in that book, or collection of books, there are 
mistakes, contradictions, human imperfections ; that the book is 
simply human (always remembering how God's Spirit works with 
man) ; that it differs from other human productions only in degree, 
not in kind ; that it is a glorious collection of histories, thoughts, 
truths ; that it is the most precious possession of the human race ; 
that the good it has done is incalculable, but that it is human 



A MEMOIR 93 

after all — an ' earthen vessel ' — not infallible, and not to be 
worshipped as Divine ; that therefore it is as wrong to believe in 
it implicitly— in the shell, the form inclosing the truth— as in the 
Church, the history and position of which so closely resemble it. 
The great reform which the time requires, and which I think we 
shall live to see, is the surrender of the belief in the infallibility of 
any human institution, of anything that the eye can see, or the 
hand handle. 

Thus says the age of twenty-four. But Uberavi ammam. 
I wonder whether you will ever get as far as this. I am too tired 
to tell you of my French tour — very jolly but very short. 

P.S. Make a test of the subject of the last [part] x of this letter. 
Is it not simply a matter of argument ? Can you venture to say 
that faith enters into it at all, on either side ? And yet did you 
not, on reading it, conceive me as morally the worse in some slight 
degree for thinking so ? At least I feel I should, I am afraid, in 
your position ; at all events I know many of those who think as 
you, who would. 

Harrow, N.W. : [October 1861.] 
My dear Willie, — I hardly know what to say to your news. 2 
I confess that my first feeling was one of sorrow. I should myself 
so very much shrink from the idea of leaving England for good, or 
nearly so, that I can't quite like it for you, even though it is a 
grand life that you will be leading. I think perhaps you are right 
to take it. You will do all the administrative part of the work 
extremely well, and for the missionary part I don't expect you to 
fail in energy or perseverance. When once the Christian spirit of 
self-sacrifice gets united to the vigour of Anglo-Saxon enterprise, it 
is hard to see what can withstand it. I should think there could 
not be a pleasanter man, too, than Gell, to be with and under. Yes, 
I think you will enjoy it, and I think you will live a life worth 
living ; and I envy you the consciousness that you must constantly 
have of direct and practical success. But to leave the social life 
of England, to leave its intellectual and religious life at what seems 
to be such a critical time as this, and to undergo that terrible and 
absolute separation from friends — I really seem almost to shrink 
from it. However, God will surely bless you in it ; and I remember 
that when it was asked of other Apostles sent out without purse 
or scrip, ' Lacked ye anything ? ' they replied, ' Nothing.' 

1 The word in the original is illegible. 

2 His correspondent had accepted a domestic chaplancy to Bishop Gell at 
Madras. 



94 EDWARD BOWEN 

I hope you will manage to come down here before you go. 
What a number of threads you must have to take up of all kinds. 
We really ought to have one long talk about past, present, and 
future, before you vanish. I can hardly believe that there will 
be positively not one of our year left at Trinity now — everyone at 
work somewhere. How you will prize all Trinity recollections in 
a couple of years' time, when you have nothing to deal with but 
stupid natives and uhsympathising civilians. Well, if ever there 
is a judgment of natives, it will be something for England to be able 
to say that she did not grudge such men as you and your bishop 
for such work as his and yours. . . . 

Heatherwood, Freshwater, Isle of Wight : [September 1863.] 
My dear Willie, — I confess that during the quarter I was 
frequently impressed with a conviction that I ought to write to you ; 
but somehow the school-time is so fully taken up that opportune 
half-hours never seem to come off for any desirable purposes. 
However, now it is holiday-time I should have no excuse if I were 
to be still remiss. Many thanks for your letter, and your general 
views of the work and its prospects. I find it hard to take much 
interest in the details of missionary successes and failures — partly, 
because they are never given with any dramatic effect in print or 
on paper (I suppose in consequence of the impossibility to English- 
men of getting as close up to the mind of an Asiatic as to one of 
ourselves), and partly because they are monotonous ; one doesn't 
appreciate the full meaning contained in the fact of the Eev. John 
Brown having baptised ten converts and admitted a dozen com- 
municants, and then had prayers, and gone somewhere else. But 
the general results, the nature of the moral and social progress of 
Christianity, the extent to which it is possible for reformers to feel 
their way among an alien race, I do care very much for. Now I 
know men of candour and ability who declare that after much study 
of it they believe missionary work to be an almost total failure. 
On the other hand, you say that the results are ' very satisfactory ; ' 
and I take it as your deliberate opinion. Will you take as a 
criterion these two rough tests, which from ignorance I cannot put 
myself ? First, does Christianity introduce a more elevated moral 
code among the natives than they possessed before, so that a well- 
meaning and candid unbeliever is obliged to respect a convert, 
even if he thinks him misled, on account of the lofty principles 
which guide him ? Secondly, is it the case that the belief which 
you introduce accompanies social advance ? Do you really 
teach converts to be more active and energetic members of society ? 



A MEMOIR 95 

Is the gospel of steam-power and free-trade felt to be consonant 
with, and worthy of, the gospel of forgiveness and redemption ? 
I can't but think that some such tests as these any creed ought to 
be able to bear, which is destined to make much way among a 
people. 

Last term was a very pleasant one to me. It was the last 
quarter that a set of boys were there whom I had got to know very 
well, and who are now leaving for Cambridge, &c. Then the 
games are of course wonderfully interesting from every point of 
view, from the highly moral to the purely physical. I am now 
down at our little house at Freshwater, playing cricket matches as 
often as I can get them, and getting up before breakfast every 
morning to work. I am busy at a long quarterly article (for the 
' National Review ') on ' The Criticism of the Old Testament ' ! l I 
wrote one on Colenso 2 in last January's number, and they asked 
me to do another in continuation of the subject, so I am grinding 
hard at it. I was afraid you wouldn't approve of Colenso. I 
thought it right to write in general terms of praise of him. He 
notices the article in his preface to the second volume. No doubt 
I think, as most critics do, that he is mistaken in the inference he 
draws as to the totally unhistorical character of the Exodus. I 
think the grounds for denying it are not sufficient. But I fully 
believe that it is by such criticism as his, free, uncompromising, 
acute, that the real truth of all history must be made out — He- 
brew history as well as Roman ; and if he goes too far in one 
particular direction, that of incredulity, other men will veiy soon 
come back to the right critical track ; and at any rate it is an 
emphatic protest against the common view, which seems to me 
pernicious, that all the details of the story must be historical 
because they are placed in a book which our Lord, in common 
with all other pious Jews, treated with well-deserved reverence. 
Of course I shouldn't praise Colenso if I thought that his arguments 
were bad and weak ; but I think that they are for the most part 
sound as far as they go, viz. discrediting the details of the story ; 
and his second and third volumes have proved him to be what I 
never expected to find him, a really scholarlike and careful critic. 
He intends to go to Genesis next, in which I presume he will 
adopt the old line again, and then on to Samuel and Kings. I must 
say I have found a wonderful interest in the Old Testament study, 
which I have taken up in the last two or three years, and it is 
1 Vide pp. 66, 75 ff. « y ide pp> 66 ff> 



96 EDWARD BOWEN 

impossible to describe how much the interest is increased by not 
feeling fettered down to an obligation of accepting every word that 
one finds as necessarily true. In the one case it seems really 
possible to understand something of the history, as a history of 
living men ; in the other, one's efforts would seem to lie prostrate 
before a mountain of ill-assorted and even contradictory records. 
However, I know you don't go so far as I do in this, so I won't 
give you pain by more ; but I believe that our descendants a hun- 
dred years hence will hardly be able to credit the fact that educated 
men in this century really regarded the story of Balaam's ass as 
otherwise than a legend, or the Book of Chronicles as accurate in 
its statement of facts. 

I wonder when you are to be back. I suppose you will come 
out strong in the ' deputation ' line. Don't go and get knocked up 
in the liver and all that. Do they allow you in the episcopal 
residence a copious supply of Bass ? 



A MEMOIE 97 



III 

The years 1867-1882 may be regarded as marking the 
commencement and end of the second period of Edward 
Bowen's career at Harrow. By the first of these dates his 
apprenticeship has been fully served. He has learnt his 
work, and has made his name ; and, though he has still his 
critics and even his opponents, he is generally recognised by 
the members of his profession as a master whose opinion 
must always carry great weight to the scale into which it is 
thrown, and whose brilliancy, originality, and force are beyond 
question. The second date, 1882, was the year when he 
accepted the mastership of ' The Grove ' — the large house 
which ' stands on the high hill head,' and with which his 
memory will now always be most closely associated ; for, 
apart from his twenty years of government, the School owes 
the possession of it to his generosity. This middle period 
was in some respects the fullest in his life. During it the 
' Modern Side ' was founded and developed. It produced 
more than one valuable educational paper, and most of the 
School songs. They were years— as were all the remaining 
years of his life — of extreme professional pressure. Certainly 
by 1871 he had ceased to contribute either to the ' Saturday ' 
or to the ' National Beview.' : He had, too, ceased to be 
a volunteer. He was hardly ever away from the School. 
He had almost given up entertaining, and he very rarely 
dined out. He was too busy, and he remained too busy to 
the end. Now and then he would have a Cambridge friend 
to stay with him over the Sunday, and would ask one or 

1 In January 1871 he sent an article to the ' Saturday Review ' on ' The 
Lessons of the Eclipse ' (vide p. 127) ; but he wrote it during the holidays, and 
as a substitute for a man unable at the last moment to fulfil his engagement to 
the paper. 



98 EDWAED BOWEN 

two masters to meet him. Once a fortnight he would 
play whist at a neighbour's house after prayers — a col- 
league still has a vivid recollection of the lawless charac- 
teristics of his play, and of the kind of arguments with 
which the worst breaches of conventionality would be 
defended with all the appearance of logical soundness. 
Now and then he would play football away from Harrow. 
Occasionally during the course of June and July he would 
steal two or three hours to visit 'Lord's.' But as a whole 
his life was full to overflowing with school duties, and 
during term-time nothing was allowed to compete with 
them. He had throughout this period a large measure of 
reward, although the completeness of it came somewhat 
later. In these years his influence both upon colleagues 
and pupils grew with rapidity. At the same time, it never 
became during this period indisputably paramount. When 
the period closes we find him possessing an ascendancy 
which, though remarkable, was not as yet quite sufficient 
to overcome the suspicion against him, in the minds of 
some, as radical in his general sentiments and unorthodox 
in his religious opinions. It was not until a few years more 
had elapsed that his feet were, as regards prestige and 
supremacy, on absolutely the last rung of the ladder. The 
period, too, though it is mainly concerned with his profes- 
sional life, has upon it, both at its beginning and end, a 
strong gleam of outside interest. At the commencement of 
it come the memorable holidays of the summer of 1870, 
when he follows in the track of the victorious Germans 
along the line of MacMahon's retreat from Weissenburg, 
and visits Worth two weeks after the battle there ; the 
winter holidays of the same year, when he is one of the 
scientific party sent to Sicily to take observations in 
connection with the eclipst of the sun ; the Easter holidays 
of 1871, when he goes to Paris during the reign of the Com- 
mune. Towards the end of the period he has his political 
experiences, and contests — with some approach to success — a 
seat against Mr. Arthur Balfour. The story of these four- 
teen years — both as regards term-time and holidays — had 
best be told, in the main, chronologically. 



A MEMOIR 99 

In 1807, Mr. Farrar— now (1902) Dean of Canterbury— 
ed iter] a volume of essays under the title, ' Essays on a Liberal 
Education.' To this he asked Edward Bov/en to contribute, 
and the result was an important paper from his pen on the 
subject, 'Teaching by mean:-; of Grammar' — a paper which 
is well worth very close and careful study by anyone who 
desires to become acquainted with Edward Bowen's views 
as a teacher, and to understand in some measure the nature 
and characteristics of his genius. 1 The essay is throughout 
a severe, drastic, uncompromising criticism of the method 
of teaching which he found in vogue ; from which his 
experience and good sense had led him almost wholly to 
dissociate himself, and towards which he never in after 
years moved a single step nearer. ' Teaching by means of 
Grammar ' was to him — in the form in which it existed 
and with the aims on which its advocates laid stress — 
nothing else than a complete mistake. Such a method was 
in his eyes an erroneous path to an almost worthless goal. 
It was an erroneous path, for it only wearied the feet of the 
youthful learner beyond bearing. Boys, he said in effect, 
were prepared to submit to a good deal of drudgery. They 
were not, as a rule, wholly idle, or chiefly sullen ; but the 
learning of Latin and Greek through grammars, written in 
a dead language and consisting of ' a set of clumsy rules, of 
which a boy will never use the half, and never understand 
the quarter,' simply meant that a lad's time, docility, temper, 
desire to improve, confidence in his teachers, were all sacri- 
ficed. It was of course the case that a certain amount of 
grammar was necessary. Classics could not be tackled 
without some knowledge of the declensions ; but such an 
admission was no justification for the preposterous system 
which forced upon a boy what was really so much work at 
a treadmill. Grammar as it was taught was simply too 
hard. It tortured a lad without even giving him the satis- 
faction of feeling at the termination of his painful drudgery 
that he had gained some mite of real knowledge. So, too, 
the goal to which teaching by grammar was meant to lead 
was not worth the reaching. In what did such teaching end ? 

1 The essay is printed among the Appendices. 

H 2 



Lore. 



100 EDWAED JBOWEN 

Merely in pedantic scholarship. Edward Bowen proceeded 
to draw out with some contempt the ideas usually conveyed 
by the popular expression, ' a beautiful scholar.' Such an 
individual, he observes, does as a rule but little for his 
generation. ' We know well enough what becomes of the 
man who gives himself up to particles.' He becomes 
intolerant of others upon whom he looks down, for no better 
or worthier reason than that they do not possess his own 
pedantic knowledge. He is incapable of taking any useful 
or sympathetic part in social and political movements. He 
does but little even to elucidate the thoughts of those writers 
with whose grammatical characteristics he is so well ac- 
quainted. His chief capacity is 'to set a common-room 
right upon some mystic conceit of iEschylus.' Nor does 
the writer of the essay admit for one moment the doctrine 
to which expression is sometimes given — especially in con- 
nection with the prohibition of translations — that the trials 
through which, on the existing system, a pupil goes are a sort 
of moral education on account of the struggles which they 
involve. Such a thesis is, in his opinion, beyond the reach 
of argument. The man who makes it his own is out of 
court. It is so obviously the duty of the teacher to do all 
that he can to remove difficulties, and to add interest to 
learning, that any proposition involving the negative is self- 
convicted. 

Edward Bowen expresses in some vigorous sentences his 
own idea of the way in which the ordinary boy should be 
taught classics. ' Plunge him at once — i.e. after he has 
learnt a few rudiments of grammar — into the delectus.' 
Encourage him to read. Help him to read. Take off his 
hands all that wearisome work with a lexicon which involves 
such a portentous waste of time, and occupies to no real 
profit energies which might be turned to good account. 
Let him use translations. If he does not know the meaning 
of a word, tell it him. Never let him be seriously checked 
by a difficulty. If it be an insuperable one to him, at once 
help him over it. 

If only it could be regarded as an established truth that the 
office of a teacher is, more than anything else, to educate his 



A MEMOIE 101 

pupils, to cause their minds to grow and work, rather than simply 
to induce them to receive ; to look to labour rather than to weigh 
specific results ; to make sure at the end of a school-half that 
each one of those entrusted to him has had something to interest 
him, quicken him, cause him to believe in knowledge, rather than 
simply to repeat certain pages of a book without a mistake— then 
we might begin to fancy the golden time was near at hand, when 
boys will come up to their lessons, as they surely ought, 'with as 
little hesitation and repugnance as that with which a man sits 
down to his work. 

The testimony of more than one of Edward Bowen's 
pupils, which will be quoted later on, will show how nearly 
he reached his ideal with those who passed into his form, 
and came ' under the wand of the enchanter.' 



The spring of the year 1869 brought Edward Bowen 
the offer of the « Mastership ' of the new ' Modern Side,' which 
was to commence after the summer holidays. He was 
himself a very strong advocate of this change in the School 
routine, which, indeed, met with very general acceptance by 
his colleagues. His own great classical attainments, and 
the fact that so eminent a classical scholar as Dr. Butler 
approved the plan, rendered impossible any suspicions, 
which might otherwise have arisen and asserted themselves, 
that classics were to be sacrificed unnecessarily; and the 
good ship < Modern Side ' was built and launched without 
any serious opposition, though not without doubt and 
anxiety. There is extant a letter from Edward Bowen to 
his mother in which he alludes to the new venture and to 
his own prospects in connection with it. 

The case is this : after long hesitation we are to have a Modern 
School, i.e. a school on rational principles, teaching no Greek, but 
lots of history, modern languages, science, &c, and also (at all 
events at present) Latin. Of course it is an experiment, but one 
that is sure to answer to a certain extent, and one that we are 
bound to try. I am to be at the head of it. I really never 
thought of whether it will imply gain or loss of greatness to me ; 
but I don't see how it should be loss at all events. I shall have 



102 EDWAED BOWEN 

probably a great part of the responsibility of ordering the work. 
It will simply be a division of the school — a bifurcation — though 
at first I expect the clever boys won't come to it much ; in process 
of time they will. One fact is that I shall have to teach French 
and German. Now, French I could manage more or less, but as 
to German I don't know any worth mentioning and must get it 
up. So I propose to go these holidays to Dresden and work at 
it. . . . The new institution won't begin till after midsummer, and 
absolutely no arrangements are made for it as yet except the 
general idea. . . . 

There was as regards this new division one preliminary 
question of the highest possible importance. Was the 
Modern Side to be for boys admittedly inferior in capacity, 
or was it to claim perfect equality with the old Classical Side ? 
That the former interpretation of its existence and meaning 
would have been most detrimental to it — indeed, fatal to any 
real success — is obvious. Admit the Modern Side to be a 
refuge for the destitute, and a refuge for the destitute it would 
most assuredly become and remain. If, however, the depart- 
ment was not to suffer in prestige, then adequate steps must be 
taken to prevent an inrush of idlers and dullards. It must 
not be open to masters of private schools to suppose that if 
they could not pass a boy into the Classical Side of the School, 
they might yet succeed in doing so into the Modern. It is 
characteristic of Edward Bo wen that he was willing to take 
charge of this new branch of the school-work upon any 
terms. At the same time he was clear that the conditions 
attaching to admission to the Modern Side must be definitely 
settled, and that whatever was settled must be adhered to. 
It would not do to have it undetermined whether or not 
inferiority was to be the badge of the boy who did not do 
Greek. The decision was never in doubt. The Modern 
Side was in the judgment of the Headmaster to be on the 
same level as the rest of the School ; and in order to give 
the fullest possible effect to this principle it was arranged 
that there was to be no class on the Modern Side lower than 
the ' Shell,' nothing corresponding even to the highest of the 
three ' Fourth Forms ' on the Classical Side — forms which 
then contained some eighty boys. It was clearly foreseen, 



A MEMOIE 103 

too, that such an arrangement would have to remain in force 
for a considerable number of years, and it was not till 1890 
that a ' Fourth Form ' was added. 

It is not necessary to trace in detail the fortunes of 
the Modern Side. At the close of twelve years, in 1881, 
Edward Bowen wrote a long and very striking Memorandum 
in connection with it, which will be read by all educationists 
with appreciative interest. It will be seen from the intro- 
ductory letter that it was drawn up in response to a request 
from Dr. Butler ; and it is here given in full, with the 
exception that initials are substituted for names. 

Harrow : Sept. 10, 1881. 
My dear Dr. Butler, — I send you the memorandum which you 
asked me to draw up with regard to the Modern Side at Harrow ; 
and I am sorry that I have not been able to complete it in a 
shorter compass. It is at your service for any use to which you 
may think fit to put it. 

I am, yours very sincerely, 

E. E. Bowen. 

MEMOBANDUM ON THE MODEKN SIDE, 1869-1881 

General Principles of the Modem Side. — "When in the spring 
of 1869 the Headmaster proposed to me to undertake the chief 
management of a Modern Department, I suggested that it was 
necessary to discriminate between two alternative conceptions : 
on the one hand, that of a branch of the School which should aim 
at the best attainable teaching, and rank as far as possible on an 
equality with the Classical School ; on the other, that of a division 
which should be professedly inferior, should welcome the duller 
boys, and bring the teaching to as low a level as was necessary 
for their training. I was willing to undertake the task on either 
hypothesis : Dr. Butler chose the former. I then proposed the 
following general principles for its establishment : „ 

1. The department is to be taught separately as regards all 
school-work. 

2. The teaching is intended to be of a high class. 

3. In every way, except in form-work, the boys are to retain 
their association with those on the Classical Side. 

4. The chief subjects are to be mathematics, modern languages, 
history, Latin, science, English. 



104 EDWAED BOWEN 

5. Boys are to be trained for the army examinations, but not 
for these exclusively. 

These principles were accepted by Dr. Butler, and have guided 
the administration of the Modern Side ever since. 

History of Modem Side. — It commenced its existence in 
September 1869, with three forms, 27 boys, and one form-master. 
[The mathematical arrangements will be explained hereafter.] In 
January 1870 the number of boys was 37, and a second master 
was added to the Modern staff. The numbers increased slowly ; 
in January 1873 they amounted to 56, and a third form-master 
was created. But a tendency to decrease showed itself, which, 
though temporary, seemed for a time persistent, and the third 
master was dispensed with in January 1875, the numbers being 
then 45. The larger staff was restored in September of the same 
year, and since then the Modern Side has reached — in January of 
1876, 55 boys ; of 1877, 69 boys ; of 1878, 69 boys ; of 1879, 62 
boys ; of 1880, 73 boys ; of 1881, 76 boys. In January 1881 a 
fourth form-master was added ; and next week I anticipate that 
the numbers of the Modern Side will be somewhat over 80. 

It would not be becoming in me to speak of the personal quali- 
fications of my colleagues in the teaching of the Modern forms ; 
but I may say that from the commencement till now our work 
has been completely harmonious ; the arrangements have been 
matters of constant discussion in common ; and there has never 
been the smallest jar to disturb our cordial relations and the 
development of our work. 

General Description. — The changes in the working of the 
Modern Side have been entirely changes in detail, and hardly 
need description. It may be enough to delineate it as it exists at 
present. 

The forms, which are seven — or perhaps eight — in number, 
are (as regards school rank) distributed among those of the 
Classical Side ; taking their place, with as much evenness as can 
be attained, at intervals from the Sixth Form to the Lower Shell. 
There is no Modern Fourth Form. The promotions are intended 
to be so arranged that the progress of an average boy shall be 
approximately equal in both departments. Each of the Modern 
form-masters has, in general, two forms in his charge, which, 
though working in some subjects together, are kept separate in 
order and in marks. To his forms, as such, the form-master 
teaches divinity, history, for the most part Latin, sometimes 
English, and to a certain extent French ; and he is generally 



A MEMOIE 105 

responsible for their reports, ' placings,' &c. But apart from his 
form-work, each master gives lessons, as far as his time allows 
him, to classes of boys in some of the following subjects — German, 
geography, French composition — and in some cases mathematics. 
These classes are arranged according to special merit in the 
subject taught, and irrespectively of form order. All the higher 
mathematical classes are taught by Mr. B., whose work is solely 
mathematical, but is also partly given to the Classical Side ;' and 
some other mathematical masters belonging to the Classical Side 
give a certain amount of mathematical help to the Modern. The 
science teaching is in the hands of the science masters, and is 
organised in the same way as that of the rest of the School. 
The Modern form-masters are now myself, Mr. C, Mr. D., and 
Mr. G. 

In 'pupil-room,' it is intended that the members of the 
Modern Side shall be free to join those of the Classical Side who 
have the same tutor ; and the hours of school-work are arranged 
with this object. In spite of some difficulties of detail, I should 
be sorry to alter this understanding. 

Entrance to Modem Side. — Entrance to the Modern Side was at 
first confined to boys already in the School. It was thought that 
for some time the restriction would be necessary, in order to 
prevent an influx of very dull boys, to whom it would be difficult 
to refuse admission. This rule was relaxed in April 1874, when 
competent new-comers were allowed to join the Modern Side at 
once ; it may be interesting to mention that the first boy who did 
so was a son of one of the governors of the School. It was provided 
that the entrance examination should be held several weeks before 
the actual time of entrance, and that those only should be admitted 
who could pass with credit in mathematics and French, some 
Latin being also required. The tendency to think that the Modern 
Side affords a safe refuge for ignorance is still so great among the 
parents and tutors of backward boys, that I am convinced that 
these safeguards cannot yet be prudently withdrawn. It is also 
provided that those who join from the Classical Side must have 
done at least fairly well in their previous forms. This rule is also 
still indispensable. Of its application to particular boys I have 
been regarded as the interpreter, subject to an appeal to the Head- 
master. 

Comparing the two classes of boys who join the Modern Side, 
there is no doubt which are the more successful. Those who have 
begun at an early age to study the Modern subjects beat out of the 



106 EDWAED BOWEN 

field, for the most part, those who take to them after spending 
some time on Classical work. The certainty of this result is such 
as surprises me, and I venture to think that the inference from it 
is most important. I lay so much stress on it that it seems to me 
worth while to mention the following fact. Taking the seven 
Modern forms one by one, as they stood in the last examination, 
and collecting the first five in each, there results a total of 35 boys, 
the best of their several ages. Of these boys two only, the third in 
one form and the fifth in another, had been on the Classical Side at 
first. The other 33 had all joined at entrance. 

Character of Modem Side, Intellectual and Social. — The limi- 
tations above mentioned are successful, to a considerable extent, 
in excluding the most incompetent boys. They are obviously not 
capable of attracting the most clever ; still they no doubt exercise 
some influence in conciliating public respect. The a priori feeling of 
School society would naturally be to consider any special department 
as a resource for idleness or stupidity ; it needs a hard struggle to 
check, or ultimately destroy, this prejudice. The general result is 
that the Side consists for the most part of average boys. Very 
clever ones are more rare than on the Classical Side. They were 
to some extent attracted by the Modern Entrance scholarships, 
which existed from 1876 to 1880, and which certainly encouraged, 
both directly and indirectly, the entrance of able boys. Eecent 
regulations, which came into force this year, have tended somewhat 
against the interest of the Modern Side, in so far as they have 
substituted for ' Modern ' scholarships ' mathematical ' ones, which 
may be tenable on the Classical Side ; and have diminished the 
comparative importance of French. 

On the other hand, it is satisfactory to think that the Modern 
Side has been able to preserve itself from any social disfavour. 
The boys who have composed it have been certainly not, relatively 
to their number, the least popular or prominent or influential boys 
in the School. On the whole, their personal character has stood, 
as far as I can judge, quite as high as, and perhaps higher than, 
that of the mass of their schoolfellows. In a more restricted 
sense of the term social, it is probable that the classes from which 
the members of the Modern Side have been drawn have been in a 
proportion larger than the average, the more influential classes 
of society. From another, and to the boys themselves an important, 
point of view, it is worth recording that though numbering from 
one-tenth to one-sixth of the School, the Modern Side has been in 
the habit of rivalling the Classical in the common outdoor games. 



A MEMOIE 107 

Details of Work. — I may now with advantage offer a short 
sketch of some details of our Modern work. 

Mathematics is worked in sets, of from twelve to fifteen boys 
each, the Sixth Form being, however, kept separate from the rest ; 
and these sets are different for each mathematical subject. Each 
boy has five, six, or seven lessons a week, with preparation for 
each. Boys preparing for special examinations have more, drop- 
ping other subjects in which they are weak. 

To science there is allotted the same time as on the Classical 
Side, with from time to time some slight attempt at a better 
classification. 

Latin is taught two or three times a week, attention being 
given to the meaning of the books as much as to verbal detail. 
Quantity is aimed at as much as quality, and it is desired, since so 
little time is devoted to the subject, that a boy should read more 
authors, and more of each, than he could do if he worked more 
closely at the scholarship of the lesson. Possibly we carried 
this idea too far at first, and we are endeavouring to recall our 
energies a little more to the diction itself. On the whole, Latin as a 
language does not reach a high standard ; still, a boy gains some- 
thing of the ideas and writings of Eome ; and it must be remem- 
bered that those who join the Modern Side are in almost all 
cases boys who are presumably less good in Latin than in other 
subjects. 

Divinity is taught on Sunday and on Monday morning ; on the 
latter day the French Testament is used instead of the Greek. 
This answers well ; it is but nominal labour for most boys to 
construe it, but it supplies a vehicle for a lesson, when translated 
aloud. I have not for some years done any ecclesiastical history ; 
I am sorry that our curriculum is unable to include this. 

French is learnt partly by translation in ordinary lessons (in 
the lower forms) and partly by careful lessons and exercises in 
prose composition ; the latter is taken in special sets or divisions. 
Grammar lessons as such are rarely given to young boys, but all 
are trained in grammatical usages and laws. In the upper forms 
very little French construing is orally practised, but a French 
book is prepared, on the substance of which a lesson is given. In 
two of the three terms I always use for this purpose a campaign 
of Napoleon from Thiers, and have great reason to be satisfied with 
the lesson. Boys seem to themselves to be doing manly work ; to 
be treated less as children ; to come out of the cloister. 

For German we break up altogether into sets, since most boys 



108 EDWAED BOWEN 

know no German when they enter. I think we succeed pretty- 
well. We all agree most fully in the two following principles, 
drawn from our German teaching : one, that boys taught in divi- 
sions make much faster progress than if taught in classes arranged 
according to an aggregate of subjects ; the other, that boys who 
begin a language late make much faster progress than boys who 
begin it early. 

History is formally taught but little; but it is incidentally 
taught all day, and the more in proportion as a boy ascends the 
School. In the upper forms an historical allusion is never remote 
from the purpose of any lesson, and the subject is made, in one 
way or another, one of the most important. The theory on which 
we work is not the very influentially supported one, that a 
boy should learn little but learn it well : we do, it is true, take 
detached pieces of history and study them with much care ; but 
our aim is that a boy shall also, if intelligent and industrious, 
have some rough knowledge of general history by the time he 
leaves school ; that he shall begin early to form for himself a 
framework of historical knowledge, which he can fill up more and 
more accurately as he has opportunity. 

English literature is read at least once a week, and generally 
forms part of the holiday task. For English composition we have 
not as much time, or as much master-power, as would enable us to 
pursue it methodically. Indeed, a weak point in our system seems 
to lie in the lower results which are reached in the form, as com- 
pared with the substance of the training. The higher boys have 
not, as on the Classical Side, the advantage of masters specially 
appointed to teach composition on paper ; the comparative infre- 
queney of accurate translation into English, and the great com- 
parative emphasis which is given to the supply of information and 
the storage of facts, tend to throw the value of all the details of 
literary excellence into the shade. Faults of spelling, and ill- 
arranged sentences, are often noticeable in boys who have read in 
school more English literature than the average of their com- 
panions. Still, it would be a mistake to suppose that such faults 
are necessarily due to the system of education solely. 

Geography is taught formally to the youngest boys, and less 
as they advance in the School ; but we think that in connection 
with historical and other books we teach the subject as much 
as is desirable. 

Political economy, logic, and English philology form from time 
to time a portion of the teaching of the Sixth Form. 



A MEMOIE 109 

Books for Modern purposes are now more numerous and better 
than they were ten years ago. It may be worth while to mention 
that there prevails among us the custom, to which I attach 
great importance, that no books are used for our school-work 
which have been written by masters at present engaged in our 
teaching. 

Besults. — When we come to consider the results of the system 
of teaching on the Modern Side, it is easy enough to specify spme. 
I should claim as emphatically in its favour the fact that to a 
greater degree, as I believe, than under the Classical regime, the 
boys like their work. To some extent at any rate, and I think 
more than under other systems, the traditional repugnance of the 
schoolboy to sit down to his lessons has been overcome. The 
temptations of play are still strong to English youth ; but, these 
apart, I cannot honestly complain of a large amount of idleness. 
The boys do feel that they are being helped to learn, instead of 
(as often seems to them the case) being put through a mill. In 
the upper forms of the Modern Side punishments are never used. 
And, what is perhaps still more important, I hope I am not mis- 
taken in saying that whether they like their work or not, they re- 
spect it. I do not find that old members of the Modern Side talk 
of their past studies in the tone of disparagement which is so often 
adopted, in speaking of school experiences, by others who have 
been trained in classical scholarship without ever rising to its 
higher regions. 

But if asked what the real intellectual gain of a Modern pupil 
is, as compared with a Classical, I feel that this must be matter of 
individual opinion rather than of historic statement ; and my own 
opinion on the most advantageous subject-matter of education 
is hardly needed in this Memorandum. But I may advance one 
or two propositions which are not always sufficiently considered, 
and which are yet beyond serious denial. 

a. It is impossible for any boy, short of the very highest genius, 
to grapple successfully with all the desirable subjects of education 
during his school course. I cannot remember one who has done 
so in the last ten years. 

b. The study of Greek is difficult and long. Very few boys 
learn Greek well at school. I do not mean to infer that some who 
learn it badly have gained nothing by the time spent ; but at 
Harrow the lessons of Greek on the Classical Side are curtailed 
within limits of time so narrow as to render advanced Greek 
knowledge impossible to most boys. 



110 EDWAED BOWEN 

c. The majority of boys drop Greek on leaving school. Still 
more drop it after a single year. 

d. Few average men have time and energy sufficient to enable 
them to study to much purpose in after life the two chief 
Modern languages, and the rudiments of history and [of] English 
literature. 

e. Most Classical boys leave school knowing little or nothing 
of these subjects. 

/. For a great majority of minds a full study of low mathe- 
matics is as useful as any work that can be undertaken ; and our 
Harrow Classical education cannot without great difficulty em- 
brace this. 

The inference that for all except the few best adepts in 
language a Modern education conveys a richer profit, seems to me 
to follow from these considerations. Whether any other premisses 
exist, based upon the paramount value of the Greek language 
and of Classical composition, which turn the scale in the other 
direction, I am hardly called upon to judge. 

Indeed, the concrete results of our own Modern teaching are, 
I fear, beyond the reach of any of the ordinary tests. To criticise a 
product one must gauge the raw material ; and, while the success 
of the Classical Side itself is in the main untested, because the 
majority of its members never present themselves for any external 
examination at the universities or elsewhere, that of the Modern 
has an additional obscurity from the impossibility of estimating 
exactly the intellectual rank of the pupils who enter it. Nor, 
indeed, has it much opportunity of matching itself even against 
the Classical Side on common ground, for there is very little ground 
in common. It has, indeed, been said, and said in public, by very 
eminent persons, that as a general rule Modern Sides are beaten by 
Classical Sides, even in the examination for Modern prizes. No 
one, it is true, could say this who had much knowledge of the 
working of Harrow (where in the competitions which are open to 
both divisions of the School alike the Modern Side has far more 
than held its own) ; but it may be worth while to put on paper a 
few facts which indicate the value of the statement. The chief 
Modern subjects are mathematics, French, German, and history, 
science being common to both sides. The chief prizes devoted to 
these subjects, and open to the whole School, are the following : 

a. The Neeld Mathematical Medal. A Modern Side candidate 
was first in this examination in the years 1873, 1875, 1877, 1878, 
1879, 1880, 1881. 



A MEMOIR 111 

b. The ' Fortescuo ' Prize for French or German. A Modern 
boy gained it in 1872, 1873, 1874, 1875, 1876, 1880. 

c. The ' Botfield ' Medal for German or French. A Modern boy 
gained it in 1873, 1877, 1880. 

There is no prize for knowledge of history at Harrow; in the 
' Bourchier ' prize examination there was last year for the first time 
one general historical paper, and in it a Modern hoy was first. 
The Divinity prize is not open to the Modern Side, since a know- 
ledge of Greek is necessary. One of the Science prizes has been 
won by a Modern candidate in 1875, 1876, 1878, 1880, 1881. Of 
the two ' Flower ' prizes, for composition in Modern languages, one 
at least has been won by a boy on the Modern Side every year that 
they have been awarded since 1873. I should add that the 
Modern Side has averaged one-eighth of the entire School. It may 
be hoped that whether it is in the newspapers or in the Cambridge 
Senate-house that the statement is in future made which I quoted 
above, it may not remain uncontradicted. 

As regards distinction at the university, I cannot claim much 
success for the Modern Side. It has as yet had time but for few 
honours, and in such opportunities as have been offered it has been 
on the whole unfortunate. In the Army examinations it has done 
fairly ; there have been two or three brilliant successes, many average 
entries, and more than one bad failure. I have reason to believe 
that cadets from the Harrow Modern Side are considered by the 
authorities specially welcome at Woolwich. 

Estimate of System. — Passing to such estimate as I can form of 
the general working of the system, I do not think, and have never 
thought, that simple bifurcation was the best possible arrangement 
of a school. But I argued twelve years ago, and still feel, that it 
was then the only method by which Modern studies could be 
introduced with the hope of much success. And if there be no 
alternative which would admit of diversity of subjects, and grant 
to the Modern ones an equal and fair field, I should be content to 
bifurcate for ever. My own view is that the general plan of the 
Modern organisation might he extended to the whole School, and 
include Greek and higher Latin scholarship for some, or for 
many, of the boys ; but putting this aside, I do not feel that bifur- 
cation, even if not the best possible arrangement, is yet wholly 
vicious. It is easily understood ; it obviates the clashing of 
subjects ; it maintains studies which might otherwise be neglected. 
Divergence, it is often urged, should not begin too young. This, 
whether bifurcation or multifurcation be adopted, depends on 



112 EDWARD BOWEN 

what is made the basis for subsequent diversity to repose upon. 
If it is to include Greek, I cannot agree to the proposition ; and I 
have shown above what is the comparative success in the Modern 
forms of those pupils who begin Modern subjects early and those 
who adopt them late ; but if Greek be reserved till the age of four- 
teen or fifteen, as many and excellent authorities urge, I see no 
reason why a common groundwork of study should not be given 
to all boys up to this age. 

Difficulties. — I may now, perhaps, be permitted to offer some 
remarks on the difficulties which beset all 'Modern' education, 
and those special obstacles which are more closely connected with 
our Harrow organisation ; though it is hardly worth while to 
separate these into two distinct categories. 

(i) A mode of education which prefers other subjects to Greek 
not only loses the advantage which long experience has given to 
the old methods, and throws the teacher more upon his own half- 
proved resources, but also raises a very sensible prejudice by its 
very newness. This difficulty is one which, however great, 
obviously cannot increase. 

(ii) Most schoolmasters in England have been trained on the 
old system, and have felt its advantages without being completely 
alive to its defects. Many of them have little interest in other 
than Classical studies. Parents have in general a bold confidence 
in the wisdom of schoolmasters, and are prone to adopt any 
prejudices which they may feel in favour of the older methods. 

(iii) Neither of the universities is open to boys trained solely 
on the Modern system ; and although the proportion of boys who 
go from Harrow to the university is as large from the Modern as 
from the Classical Side, it is nevertheless believed by a majority of 
persons at Oxford and Cambridge that the pupils of Modern Sides 
have no desire for a university career. Time has accordingly to 
be wasted in special preparation ; and we have had promising boys 
at Harrow who have given up the hope of such a career from the 
impossibility of taking a degree without Greek. 

(iv) The existence of the Modern side at Harrow is not known 
to many parents of future Harrow boys. It would seem fair that 
the alternative modes of education should be presented in the 
School programmes with reasonable clearness, the Modern system 
being offered not as a detached postscript, but as though on a 
theoretical equality with the other. 

(v) The absence of endowments has constituted a very serious 
obstacle to the development of the Modern Side. Most Harrow boys 



A MEMOIR 113 

do not need scholarships, and for rrjy own part J should not despair 
of teaching a da;-;:-; if all school prizes were abolished. But that 
of tv/o rival systems of education one should have rich rewards 
and the other few or none, is certainly discouraging to the latter. 
I have repeatedly endeavoured without success to bring to the 
notice of the Harrow governing hod;/ the fact that though almost 
all the Harrow scholarship:-; are free, by their conditions of endow- 
ment, from any limitation of subject, not a single pound has been 
apportioned from them to the encouragement of Modern work. 
In late years one or more scholarships of minor value have been 
founded fhesid.es two specially presented by the Headmaster) for 
the benefit of the Modern Side, which have partly atoned for this 
inequality. But I doubt whether a prize for historical knowledge 
or a scholarship for simple mathematics would find a favourable 
welcome, if offered. There are no 'Fifth Form' prizes on the 
Modern Side, as on the Classical; there is no Divinity prize open 
to the upper Modern boys ; there is for them no counterpart to the 
large mass of composition prizes which now almost overtask the 
energies of the higher Classical scholars. 

(vi) Modern masters would work more efficiently if the distri- 
bution of work could be better organised ; and the larger a body 
of boys is, the more usefully can organisation be carried out. 
Smallness of numbers has thus heen against us; so also have been 
the conflicting claims of the Classical Side, to which some Modern 
masters devote part of their time ; and still more the very rapid 
changes in the Modern staff, and the difficulty of foreseeing the 
allotment of classes which will have to be made term after term ; 
with the consequent necessity of makeshift expedients, and a 
wasteful arrangement of the time of masters and boys. 

(vii) However good, and however permanent, the arrangements 
might be, Modern teaching must always be more wasteful of the 
power of a teacher than that of Classical forms. Divisions must 
be generally smaller, with more preparation for them on the 
master's part, and more paper-work to be looked over. It would 
seem to be, whether a wise proposition or not, at any rate a logical 
inference, that boys on the Modern Side should pay a larger sum 
for school teaching than those on the Classical. 

(viii) Army candidates require a great deal of extra time and 
trouble ; masters on the Modern Side are to many such boys as 
much as, and often more than, a tutor. This remark tends in the 
same direction as the last. I may add that geometrical drawing 
is now an important subject for army entrance, and will in future 



114 EDWAED BOWEN 

be still more so ; and that we have no organisation for teaching it 
in school on the Modern Side. 

(ix) If the system of bifurcation should continue, it is probable 
that for some time the Headmaster will be one who devotes his 
own teaching entirely or almost entirely to the Classical Side, and 
deputes the administration of the Modern, as far as its teaching 
and the details of its arrangements are concerned, to one of his 
colleagues. It is even possible that he may (in years unlike the 
present) have little personal interest in the most prominent modern 
subjects. There arise from this two dangers, which in some degree 
must necessarily present themselves, but might under some con- 
ditions become seriously pressing. It would not be unnatural that 
the Modern Side boys, those who seldom or never, even at the close 
of their career, come under the notice of the Headmaster, should 
feel that they belong to an inferior and neglected department ; and 
if it should happen that the Headmaster is a teacher who is 
recognised by parents as of professional or other eminence, this 
feeling will be aggravated. Equally unfortunate would be a 
notion, if it should ever arise, among members of the Modern Side, 
that in matters of school discipline they had to expect less con- 
sideration than others from a master whose work lay with the 
Classical boys alone. There are only two ways of avoiding these 
dangers : one, that the Headmaster should ordinarily divide his 
energies between the two departments, a scheme which would 
involve a great sacrifice to that which is at present favoured ; and 
the other, that more prominence and more authority should be given 
to the chief master of the Modern Side, a plan which would be 
extremely difficult in working, and would seriously damage the 
uniformity of school administration in proportion as it developed 
from theory into practice. I am not prepared to suggest any 
remedy for the difficulty above mentioned, but only to indicate it 
as a weak point in the system of bifurcation. 

(x) Another difficulty, not of Modern education, but of the 
method of bifurcation, is that within itself a Modern Side is com- 
pelled to be almost as rigid as the Classical. It is practically 
impossible, except with the highest boys and a very few others, to 
introduce fresh internal divergence. And yet it does not follow 
because a boy is good in mathematics, that he will be good in French 
and German, or vice versa. At present one who combines a taste 
for Greek with a taste for history is not suited in either department. 
A general ' divisional ' system applied to the whole school might 
give him his proper place ; a simple partition into two ' Sides ' 
does not. 



A MEMOIR 115 

(xi) It would hardly be expected that difficulties should be 
wholly absent which depend on the individual adaptation of 
particular masters to the details of Modern teaching, or the 
apportionment of members of the staff for special times and special 
quantities of work ; but if such difficulties should at any moment 
exist or disappear, they could not with propriety be embraced in a 
memorandum which is not intended to be confidential. 

(xii) I have only to point out finally one difficulty which is 
at present important, but will gradually become less so : that the 
early training for a future Modern training is so incomplete 
and precarious. Many preparatory schools never undertake the 
function ; others dislike and discourage it. But this must be taken 
as only one of the obstacles which beset, with happily decreasing 
force, the development of what must be, however promising for 
the future, still for the present an uphill task. 

E. E. Bowen. 

There is hardly anything to be added with regard to 
Edward Bowen's responsibility for the guidance and super- 
vision of the Modern Side, and what little more there is to 
say may as well be said here as later. He declined in 1888 
to organise the Army class, not admitting the necessity for it, 
and for the most part disliking the arrangement ; and the 
organisation was committed to the hands of one of his 
colleagues on the Modern Side. In 1893 a difference of 
opinion arose between him and the Headmaster, the Eev. 
J. E. C. Welldon — afterwards Bishop of Calcutta, and now 
(1902) Canon of Westminster — in connection with a matter 
of importance to the Modern Side as a whole, which 
resulted in Edward Bowen's resignation of responsibility for 
its management. The difficulty arose out of the infringe- 
ment by Mr. Welldon (as he then was) of the rule, which 
had been clearly laid down from the first, that the Modern 
Side was not to be made a harbour of refuge for the less 
able and satisfactory pupils. So strictly had this rule during 
the Headmastership of Dr. Butler been adhered to, that 
the Modern Side only received transfers from the Classical 
by examination. Mr. Welldon, however, dropped this regu- 
lation and flooded the lower forms on the Modern Side with 
the worst boys on the Classical Side — the latter being at the 

i 2 



116 EDWAED BOWEN 

time overfull. Edward Bowen disliked the change — that 
goes without saying ; but he would have been willing to 
accept it, if it had been duly announced — in the same way 
that he had in 1869 told Dr. Butler that he would take 
charge of the Modern Side on either arrangement as to 
its status in the School, so long as that arrangement 
was clearly set out. He now asked Mr. Welldon that 
the change in policy and administration should be duly 
made public. This was refused on the ground that the 
alteration was only temporary. Edward Bowen in conse- 
quence declined to be further responsible for the superinten- 
dence of the Modern Side, though he continued to his death 
to teach the two upper forms. The responsibility for both 
Modern and Classical Sides then passed to the Headmaster, 
and still rests with him. But by 1893 the success of the policy, 
which had ' after long hesitation ' been initiated nearly a 
quarter of a century previously, had become completely assured 
— nay, had been so for some years ; and the manner in 
which it had been carried out was generally recognised in 
the profession as an example which had to be taken into the 
fullest consideration. At that time there had probably been 
no Modern Side subsequently started at an English public 
school without careful inquiry being made into that at 
Harrow as a pattern and guide full of importance and value. 
The ' Side ' too had added considerably to its prestige in 
school- work since the writing of the above Memorandum. 
In 1893 it was absolutely pre-eminent in mathematics ; in 
modern languages it more than held its own ; when general 
history became part of the examination for the ' Bourchier ' 
prize, then also the capacity of the Modern Side boy was 
shown. It is curious, too, to find that three times the Fifth 
Form prize for Latin prose went to representatives of that 
department, and once the School prize for a Latin Epigram. 
As regards the Universities, Entrance scholarships at Trinity, 
Cambridge, were twice gained between 1883 and 1893. The 
' Side,' too, was successful in the examinations at Woolwich, 
the first place being twice held by a boy direct from the 
School, and in other years the 2nd, 4th, 5th, 7th, &c. At 
the time of writing (1902) the Modern Side is about one-third 



A MEMOIR 117 

of the whole, and its popularity is increasing rather than 
diminishing ; while the addition of two Entrance scholarships 
tenable only on that side — one of them given by a relation of 
Edward Bowen's in his memory, and the other provided by 
some ground-rents at Totland, in the Isle of Wight, be- 
queathed by him to the School — will doubtless prove an 
additional incentive to recruits, and will do at any rate 
something more than had hitherto been done to remedy the 
injustice to which he had drawn attention in 1881, and to 
remove ' the very serious obstacle to the development ' of 
that branch of the school-work which he then had made a 
matter of complaint. Indeed, the time may come before 
long when Harrow will be a Modern School with a Clas- 
sical Side, unless yet another step in educational progress 
should become possible and there be a fusion of the two 
departments. 



It was the year 1869 — the year which witnessed the 
birth of the Modern Side — which saw the first of the famous 
series of School songs. This was one descriptive of an 
imaginary Harrow — an ideal Harrow it is at first suggested, 
standing in much the same relationship to the actual School 
as Tennyson's ' island-valley of Avilion ' to our own country 
of sudden storms and many temperatures. 

Underneath the briny sea, 

Where be the fishes and the mermaids three, 

There lies Harrow as it ought for to be ! 

Into this happy, luxurious place the fishes come to learn, 
and to live the life of ' independent fish.' No question of 
discipline enters in to chafe and fret. No match is ever 
lost there. Fruit is to be had for the asking. Ices tumble 
from the sky. All lessons obtain the highest rewards. 
Prizes are universal, as a general rule. The mishaps of 
construing are unknown : while sums have their answers 
written upon them. As regards questions of virtue, the 



118 EDWARD BOWEN 

fundamental principle which prevails there is sheer incapacity 
to do wrong. ' Fishes all are born good, naturally ! ' The 
last verse, which conies as the correction of those preceding 
it, sounds a deep note ; though its full significance is 
almost lost in the badinage which the writer still employs. 
The real Harrow is better than the imaginary. Life without 
its obstacles would not be worth the living, while it is 
discipline and struggle which give merit and value to 
results. The permanence of victory is with righteousness, 
and not with that which ' defileth,' which ' loveth and 
maketh a lie.' 

Which is the better, man, or boy, or fish, 

To live life lazily, swimming as you wish, 

Lolling dull heads about, twirling weary thumbs, 

Or to take sweet and bitter, as sweet and bitter comes ? 

Wealth without toil is a sorry sort of lot ; 

Learning unworked for is just as well forgot ; 

Good beats bad, when the fight is only free, 

Both up at Harrow here, and under the sea. 

The song is undoubtedly a fine one ; at the same time it 
is among his least successful. Shortly afterwards — before 
the close of the year — he gave the School his second, a light 
little ditty, which Mr. Farmer set to a merry old English 
time. The subject is John Lyon's first experiences of pupils. 
Two boys came to the founder of the school for instruction, 
one useless in work and play, the other excelling in both. 
As the latter wore a ribbon of blue, this became the School 
colour : 

Lyon of Preston, yeoman, John, 

Died many years ago, 
All that is mortal of him is gone, 

But he fives in a school I know ! 
All of them work at their football there, 

And work at their five-times-three ; 
And all of them, ever since that day, wear 
A ribbon of blue — like me ! 

The next twelve or fifteen months produced two more 
songs. The first of these — never a very popular one, but 



A MEMOIE 119 

pretty and tasteful — is on the School Bell. The second — 
which is, and always has been, an immense favourite — is 
descriptive of ' the most lamentable comedy ' of a certain 
popular monarch, whose prowess always excites so much 
enthusiasm among friends, and so much dismay among 
foes. 

Willow the King is a monarch grand, 
Three in a row his courtiers stand ; 
Every day when the sun shines bright, 
The doors of his palace are painted white ; 
And all the company bow their backs 
To the King with his collar of cobbler's wax. 
So ho ! so ho ! may the courtiers sing, 
Honour and life to Willow the King. 

His Majesty, however, has a determined opponent in the 
person of 'the Leathery Duke,' of whose enmity he is at 
first disposed to make light. 

'Who is this,' King Willow he swore, 
' Hops like that to a gentleman's door? 
Who's afraid of a Duke like him ? 
Fiddlededee ! ' says the monarch slim : 
' What do you say, my courtiers three ? ' 
And the courtiers all said, ' Fiddlededee ! ' 
So ho ! &c. 

But the King, in spite of his confidence, or rather in 
consequence of it, falls a victim to his enemy, and is 
carried off from the scene of his humiliation to be ' put to 
bed in the green-baize tree.' The ' Duke ' in his turn is so 
inflated with vanity that he turns into a football. 

' What of the Duke ? ' you ask anon, 
' Where has his Leathery Highness gone ? ' 
he is filled with air inside — 
Either it's air, or else it's pride — 
And he swells and swells as tight as a drum, 
And they kick him about till Christmas come. 
So ho ! &c. 



120 EDWAED BOWEN 

The twelve months between the early summer of 1870 
and that of 1871 brought Edward Bowen three sets of 
holidays of peculiar interest. The first of these — the 
summer holidays of 1870 — enabled him to visit, though not 
for any great length of time, a portion of the ground of 
the Franco-Prussian War, which had just broken out, and 
which was already bringing the heaviness of defeat to 
French gaiety and confidence. This was not indeed the 
first occasion on which Edward Bowen had gone to the 
scene of contemporary military operations. In 1864 he had 
travelled with a friend in Denmark during the earlier stages 
of the Schleswig-Holstein war, had been taken over the 
works of the fortress of Duppel shortly after the failure 
of a Prussian assault upon it, and had even been under fire 
there. But there is no complete record of this first expedi- 
tion ; such as there is breaks off suddenly in the middle. 
In 1870, however, he wrote to his mother a long letter 
giving a vivid account of his experiences — of his journey to 
Weissenburg, just evacuated by MacMahon, of his following 
down the line of the French retreat to Worth, of his visit 
to the battle-field fourteen days after the sanguinary struggle 
there — and the letter has fortunately been preserved. Edward 
Bowen always had a curiously double nature as regards the 
question of war. He was on the one hand an ardent 
student of military history; he went to every, or almost 
every, battle-field of note in Europe ; he carefully collected, 
labelled, and kept little memorials — stones or leaves — of the 
sites of battles ; he made and published military selections 
for school use from Thiers' ' Histoire du Consulat et de 
l'Empire.' On the other hand, his horror of war was 
throughout the greater part of his life intense. Evidences 
of his aversion to it have already been found in his Cam- 
bridge work ; but the feeling only strengthened as time 
went on. Edward Bowen was a ' peace at almost any 
price ' man. He dreaded any encouragement of the mili- 
tary instincts of a nation. He had once been a Volunteer, 
but he became no well-wisher to the School Volunteer 
corps. He remarked on one occasion that he would gladly 
lead a revolution against universal conscription in this 



A MEMOIE 121 

country. This strange two-sidedness was, as has just 
been said, characteristic of all his manhood — he was never, 
even when an undergraduate, an advocate of militarism ; 
he never, even in mature years, lost his love of battle- 
fields. It cannot therefore be supposed that his dread of 
war originated with his experiences in the summer of 1870, 
when he did not indeed see face to face the naked horrors 
of modern warfare in all their terrible hideousness and 
deformity, but did look on a field in which the dead had 
only just been buried, where their accoutrements were still 
heaped high, and over which the smell of death hung 
heavily. Still the knowledge, not from hearsay but from 
sight, of what the ground which had been the scene of a 
bloody and fierce contest between European troops may be, 
even a fortnight after ' the battle ' has been ' lost and won,' 
may well have done much to intensify that feeling of revulsion 
from a policy involving actual warfare, which — in spite of a 
strong academical interest in military tactics — marked him as 
strongly and as continuously as any of his other qualities. The 
point gains somewhat in importance from the family tradition 
that he entertained, when on the verge of manhood, a very 
keen desire to enter the Army, and that he only forewent the 
fulfilment of it in deference to his mother's earnestly ex- 
pressed wishes. If this be so, he was doubtless grateful to 
her in after years for her deterrent influence. If Edward 
Bowen had the brain of a soldier, there was that in him 
which would have unfitted him, at any rate in a measure, 
for the grim realities of a soldier's duties when on active 
service. 

His letter to his mother from France in August 1870 is 
as follows : 

Mannheim : August 22, 1870. 
My dearest Mother, — I fully meant to have dated a despatch 
to you from the battle-field (a late, not present battle), but was too 
tired each day. However, I sit down now immediately on returning 
to civilised life. I think I last wrote from Switzerland ; since then 
I have travelled a few days, partly on foot, partly by train, in 
Bavaria, and at last made straight for the Ehine. After a round- 
about route I at last found myself at Heidelburg, from which 
I got to Carlsruhe, a few miles from the river, and nearly opposite 



122 EDWAED BOWEN 

the seat of war. All trains were slow, all unpunctual. Nothing 
heard from morning to night but war-talk. The trains forward 
[are filled] with recruits and stores, and backward with prisoners 
and wounded, just as you have read in the papers. They are 
hurrying up fresh troops as hard as ever. I crossed with a 
quantity of the northern army (Von Falkenstein's), whom they are 
sending to the front, naturally thinking that they will not be 
wanted on the Baltic. A number of the Landwehr (militia) are 
also going forward to occupy the ground as they take it, and 
relieve the actual army. 

My severer troubles began with crossing the Ehine. [There 
is] a bridge of boats which leads over into the southern part of the 
Palatinate — German (Bavarian) ground. But I was quite deter- 
mined to go on. The fact is that ten days before, when at Bale, I 
had put on my knapsack and started for a walk into French Alsace 
towards Mulhausen, and had been stopped and sent back by a 
sentry, who would pay no heed to my protestations of neutrality. 
' My good sentry,' I said, as I went away (but not out loud), ' the 
next time I choose to take a walk into France, I shall do it 
without asking leave.' So I was on my way. I should say I 
was not going to the front at all — nowhere near the fighting, and 
there was no danger whatever. The only two important rules to 
observe were, first, never on any account to give anything to a 
soldier ; second, not to carry firearms. What I did carry was an 
umbrella and a carpet-bag. However, as to the bridge, I got across 
it at last, having, when almost despairing, obtained a pass from 
the major in command. I should say that all through the officers 
were very well disposed and civil, except when now and then they 
were over-bothered and irritable. The bridge crossed, what next ? 
Here is a map. [A rough pen-and-ink sketch follows.] 

There is a roundabout railway from the bridge to Weissen- 
burg, but I found it was entirely stopped for traffic — had none but 
military trains, and none at all that day. I tried to get a carriage, 
but the horses were all taken for the army. I asked for a cart, a 
waggon, anything, but in vain. So I started off, carpet-bag in 
hand. After about seven miles, I broke down, and found it 
wouldn't do ; besides, it was raining. I went everywhere begging 
for a horse ; but couldn't get one, till at last a man offered me a 
carriage to take me the remaining miles to Weissenburg for a 
napoleon. I closed with him and went off. We got there. It is 
a walled town in France. The French occupied it on the morning 
of the 4th. As I got near, all the groimd looked as if a steeple- 



A MEMOIE 123 

chase had been going over it — palings broken down, vineyards 
destroyed, cartridge-papers lying about. The sentry at the gate 
made (to my surprise) no objection, and I entered the town just 
as the evening was setting in, with an appearance of rain. I went 
to the little inn of the place, a respectable sort of tavern. ' Can I 
have a bed ? ' 'It can't be done. Quite impossible. Full of 
soldiers, and some extra billets just come in.' I have learnt, by 
much experience never to take that kind of answer ; so in I went 
and said that at all events I would have something to eat. Then 
I told the host that he must try and manage somehow. I had 
brought a shawl, in case it should be impossible to get a lodging, 
but it looked rainy and cold, and I made up my mind to sleep on 
a table. I had some .food in a little room with about forty 
soldiers, and presently the host told me that he had got me a bed. 
A worthy butcher had turned out of his room and given it me. I 
went with trembling into a little dirty house, but found a capital 
bed ; and as I had been up at five the last two days I slept 
soundly. Next day (up before six) I went off to see Worth. The 
road to it (which lies through beautiful scenery — the edge of the 
Vosges Mountains) was that by which MacMahon's army had 
retreated when forced away on the 4th from Weissenburg. I 
passed over the Geisberg, which they had tried to defend, and the 
slope where Douay, when all was lost, sent away his staff and 
walked down calmly towards the enemy till he fell — shot dead. 
After about four hours' walking I reached Worth a little before 
eleven, got some wine at a little tavern (the whole town is a vast 
hospital now), and then spent two or three hours in walking about 
the battle-field. 1 The marks of battle had begun long before I 
reached the town, for the Prussians were terribly shot down as 
they advanced over the slope towards the town. The French 
held the town (a mere little village) and the hills behind it, their 
lines forming two sides of a triangle with the apex at Worth 
(which was helped by a fair-sized stream), and on each flank, the 
sides of the triangle, were slight valleys. The Prussians attacked 
in front (at Worth) and also on both flanks, which they could do, 
being in much greater numbers. On their side of the little 
valleys, especially on the French left (the north side), each valley, 
slight as it was, was yet steep enough to resist an attacking force ; 
and indeed the French position, generally speaking, seemed to me 
a decidedly strong one ; but, though in front the Prussians had to 
advance towards the village over open ground, and so got terribly 

1 The battle had been fought on August 6. 



124 EDWAED BOWEN 

cut up, their advantage ou the flank was very great, for their 
side of the valleys had generally thick woods, while the French 
side was often almost bare. The fight at the village itself was 
very severe. Some houses [had been] burnt, some smashed in. 
It seems to have been resolutely defended. It was the day fort- 
night after the battle when I walked over the field. All the 
bodies of men and horses had been buried, though it was im- 
possible quite to bury everything, and there was the smell of 
death everywhere about. But the rest of the debris lay thick. 
Knapsacks, caps, helmets, everywhere : rifles, scabbards (they 
had carried away all the swords and valuable things generally), 
cartridges, boxes, boots, gaiters, epaulettes, by the thousand. 
Curious things, too, which one would not have thought of — a great 
quantity of private letters from the soldiers' friends, bits of books, 
brushes in great numbers, little bottles of various things, tobacco 
pouches, playing cards, and of course empty cartridges and full 
ones too- The prevailing impression it made upon the mind was, 
what a tremendous loss of life it was. You could see where the 
carnage had been thickest by the knapsacks and helmets that lay 
almost in heaps. There was one place, on the French left flank, 
almost their rear, where an open grass slope reaches down to a 
wood ; the French were on the slope, the Germans (it was a 
Bavarian corps) were in the wood. At the edge of the latter, as 
they advanced to attack it, the French must have been absolutely 
massacred ; they seem to have fallen almost by companies at a 
time. A little hollow with a poo! in it at the edge of this wood 
lay thick with debris, and I could notice places where some 
wounded man had crept into the brushwood and lain down, and 
perhaps his cartridge pouch and his knapsack were there still, 
and the mark of where he lay. Eelics of this kind stretched for 
two or three miles, or more ; then they became less and less thick, 
but did not stop for I suppose a distance of six or eight miles in 
length. The cavalry had followed as they fled. The Prussians 
had suffered as much ; but then- loss was earlier in the day and 
nearer the village, and the wrecks had been more cleared away. 
But to clear away all would be an almost endless task, and I 
wonder they have done the burying as well as they have. Here 
and there, there is already a little wooden cross stuck up, with 
some officer's name in pencil on it. I spent two or three hours in 
walking about the ground ; no one stopped me. I should say 
that I had at Weissenburg got a pass from the major in command 
to go about as I liked, on a distinct promise that I would not 



A MEMOIE 125 

attempt to make my way to the actual front. I should tire you if 
I were to say how often I was stopped and questioned at other 
places. I am perfectly tired of saying who I am and what is my 
husiness, especially as it is so difficult to make them understand 
that one can go about without having any business at all. I did 
not see any other Englishman, though there had been two there 
a couple of days before ; they had had passes from the Crown 
Prince, and I think I know who they were. 

I picked up and took away some little memorials of the field, 
bits of shell, &c. I felt very much inclined to take a chassepot, 
but how could I carry it all the way home ? — especially as it 
would have been taken away, and still more as there were procla- 
mations here and there that any civilian found with arms in his 
hand would be immediately shot. However, when at one place 
I found a sword, not very much rusted — a shortish straight sword 
such as the subaltern officers wear — it was too tempting, and 
I seized upon it. The problem was how to conceal it. As I pon- 
dered the matter a happy thought struck me. I had brought my 
umbrella ! I stuck the blade of the sword inside, and perfectly 
concealed it. But the hilt wouldn't go in neatly, and being of 
bronze glared awkwardly out by the handle. Happy thought 
again ! I stuck the upper part of the umbrella under my arm, 
and held it as one walks with a gun. So I started off — walked 
about seven miles ; and on the way met three or four battalions 
of troops on the march, besides stragglers. I thought they never 
would have done ; and all the while I had to walk past with my 
umbrella fast stuck under my arm, and every now and then the 
point would keep piercing through the silk in a terribly awkward 
way. I was dead tired when I got to a station, where I found a 
train with soldiers was to pass in an hour, and the officer gave 
me leave to go with them. So I got back to Weissenburg and my 
friendly butcher. 

This morning I got another pass to take a soldiers' train 
towards here — if I could find one going ! I went to the station ; 
they said they did not know when there would be one — there 
might be one at any moment. I walked up and down the station 
for six hours and three-quarters ; but had some eggs to eat, and 
my pipe to smoke. Then I got a train, which took about four 
hours to do about five-and-twenty miles. I came with a wounded 
soldier, who had had his hand smashed at Worth. I had a couple 
of miles more to carry my carpet-bag, concealed my sword all the 
way, and am here. 



126 EDWAED BOWEN 

I mean to try and get down the Ehine, and expect to be in 
England some time on Saturday, if all goes well. 

The winter holidays of the same year were spent on an 
interesting and very important astronomical expedition. A 
scientific party was being sent out from this country to Sicily 
to take observations in connection with the eclipse of the 
sun, and Edward Bowen obtained permission to accompany it. 
Among those who went were the present Sir Norman Lockj'er 
and Sir Henry Boscoe, and it was to the latter that Edward 
Bowen was especially assigned as a sort of aide-de-camp. The 
journey was uneventful until they reached Naples. Here a 
small and fast boat had been chartered to take the party to 
their destination. Off the Sicilian coast, however, within a 
hundred yards of the shore, the ship struck on a rock. For- 
tunate^ the sea was perfectly smooth, or crew and passengers 
would have been in considerable jeopardy. As it was, they were 
all safely landed, although one man was slightly hurt. None 
the less the wreck threw out all calculations, and it was for 
a while uncertain how far the party would now be able to 
accomplish their mission. Delicate instruments, most care- 
fully and elaborately prepared in England, were only too 
likely to be injured or ruined by the rough handling of the 
sailors and the general jostling which they received. But 
less damage was done than might reasonably have been 
expected ; and in the evening of that eventful day the whole 
expedition was safe at Catania. Here every kindness awaited 
its members. The American scientists at once proposed 
that, while the organisations should be kept distinct, the 
representatives of the two countries should work together, 
and should publish a joint report ; while to the physical 
wants of the shipwrecked mariners there was offered accom- 
modation in a splendid monastery on the outskirts of the 
town. The whole of the next week was spent in prepara- 
tions. For the purpose of the observations various parties 
were formed, Professor Boscoe taking charge of that to 
which a site on Etna was allotted. But so far as he and 
his were concerned, the expedition terminated in complete 
disappointment. On the day before the eclipse all the 



A MBMOIE 127 

instruments were carried up, together with food and fuel, on 
the backs of mules, to a spot some 5,000 feet above the sea, 
where the night was spent in a hut. They had hoped to 
go still higher, but the weather rendered any further advance 
impossible. All night long there raged a storm of lightning 
and snow. The critical hour, however, was two o'clock in 
the afternoon of the next day, and there was, notwithstand- 
ing the tempestuous character of the night, a hope that by 
that time the weather might be favourable and the eclipse 
be visible. In the morning it did clear for a while, and 
the little party could even see another group of observers 
far below them. But just as the sun darkened, the air 
thickened ; and at the moment of totality there came a 
blinding hail-storm of extraordinary ferocity, which rendered 
all observations impossible. Eight minutes afterwards the 
sky was clear again. Others, however, had been more suc- 
cessful ; and in the article which Edward Bo wen contri- 
buted to the ' Saturday Eeview ' of January 7, 1871, on 
' The Lessons of the Eclipse,' and in which he touched 
briefly on the scientific results attained, he was able to claim 
without hesitation that the expenditure of trouble and money 
upon the Sicilian expedition had not been thrown away. 

But the Easter holidays of 1871 brought experiences of 
even greater interest and importance than those of the 
previous summer. In the course of them, Edward Bowen 
paid a short visit to Paris during a period of that city's 
history which has often excited indignation and horror, but 
which has done so very largely because the facts have not 
been realised, and have hitherto been concealed from any 
likelihood of realisation by the heap of hideous libels and 
slanders piled up by triumphant and vindictive enemies. 
The Paris Communists had taken up arms against the 
Government at Versailles in the middle of March; and it 
was about four weeks afterwards that Edward Bowen, in 
company with Mr. Frank Marshall, who had just joined the 
staff at Harrow, went across to France, made his way into 
the capital without any sort of difficulty, and spent some six 
or seven days there. His visit was aided by a letter of intro- 
duction to a resident, who was able to give him much 



128 EDWAED BOWEN 

information both as to the causes of the outbreak and as to 
the personnel of the leaders. Unfortunately, his stay was 
cut short by the imperative necessity of returning home in 
time for the commencement of the summer term ; and he 
was therefore no longer in Paris at the time of the entry of 
the Versaillais, and witnessed nothing of the indiscrimi- 
nate massacre of many thousands which was deliberately 
perpetrated in the name of law and order ; but his experi- 
ences form an important and eloquent testimony to the para- 
doxical state of Paris during the brief and ill-fated reign of 
the Commune, and to the completeness of some popular 
delusions with regard to the character of its administration. 
Indeed, there can be no doubt that he accepted as approxi- 
mately accurate such a picture of the social condition of 
Paris as is contained in the following passage from Lissa- 
garay's ' History of the Commune,' a history written by a 
Communist soldier, and first published in 1876 : l 

The official despatches, the hireling journalists established at 
Versailles, pictured her [Paris] as the pandemonium of all the 
blacklegs of Europe, recounted the thefts, the arrests en masse, the 
endless orgies, detailed sums and names. According to them, 
honest women no longer dared venture into the streets ; 1,500,000 
persons oppressed by 20,000 ruffians were offering up ardent 
prayers for Versailles. But the traveller running the risk of a 
visit to Paris found the streets and boulevards tranquil, presenting 
their usual aspect. The pillagers had only pillaged the guillotine, 
solemnly burnt before the mairie of the eleventh arrondissement. 
From all quarters the same murmurs of execration rose against 
the assassination of the prisoners and the ignoble scenes at 
Versailles. The incoherence of the first acts of the Council was 
hardly noticed, while the ferocity of the Versaillese was the topic 
of the day. Persons coming full of indignation against Paris — 
seeing this calm, this union of hearts, these wounded men crying, 
' Vive la Commune ! ' these enthusiastic battalions, there Mont 
Valexien vomiting death, here men living as brothers — in a few 
hours caught the Parisian malady. 

1 The second edition was suppressed by the French Government. There 
is, however, an English translation made from this edition by E. M. Aveling, 
and it is from this translation (p. 182) that the passage cited is taken. Another 
English version is, at the time of writing, stated to be in preparation and 
almost on the eve of issue. 



A MEMOIE 129 

Such a passage is endorsed in the main by Edward 
Bowen's account of the besieged and distracted city. Paris 
was orderly. There was no serious crime. There was a 
certain amount of disgusting literature on sale in the 
streets, but the streets, taken as a whole, were probably 
purer than under the Empire. There was no incitement in 
the Communist press to murder or pillage, while the Ver- 
saillese papers were clamouring for the blood of the Federals. 
Even the narrower streets and rougher districts of the city 
were safe for the pedestrian. As for the soldiers of the 
Commune, they were invariably courteous. Edward Bowen 
tells a story of one of them, with whom he made friends, 
refusing half of a chicken sausage because it was the last 
piece that his English host had with him. So far as the 
National Guards had police duties to discharge, they dis- 
charged them with civility and good temper. No revolutionary 
movement is ever perfectly pure throughout, and doubtless the 
Communists of 1871 were 'a mixed lot; ' but that the good 
and heroic prevailed Edward Bowen held strongly, and he 
never swerved from his opinion. That the Commune itself 
never took a single life ; that the seizure of the hostages 
was a necessary and successful expedient ; that the subse- 
quent outrages, of which the more savage elements in Parisian 
society were finally guilty, paled before the infamous atro- 
cities of the commanders of the Versaillais ; that the firing of 
the Tuileries— if it was not the result of the bombardment- 
was an act pardonable both as an expedient to stay the 
advance of bloodthirsty and murderous troops, and in view 
of the associations connected with the Tuileries in the mind 
of the Paris workman; that it was ten thousand times 
better to have been Delescluze than to have been Galliffet — 
these were opinions which Edward Bowen never sur- 
rendered, and which were based partly on his sympathy 
with some of the Communistic aims, partly on his personal 
experiences in Paris, and partly on an almost unrivalled 
knowledge of the subject. There are two records of his 
visit, both from his own pen. One of them is contained in 
a letter to his mother, written the day after his return to 
England ; the second is a lecture which was delivered about 

K 



130 EDWAED BOWEN 

sixteen years afterwards (October 31, 1887) to the local 
Liberal Club at Harrow, with his friend Mr. Bryce in the 
chair. The latter, which represents his mature opinions, 
and which is probably far the best thing in English on the 
movement, is printed in full among the Appendices. The 
letter may be given here, and is as follows : 

I wonder whether you got my two letters : one I sent by a 
stranger on Thursday, and the other with a rather better chance 
on Friday. Yesterday at 1 o'clock we were just opposite Asnieres 
watching the cannonading and sharp-shooting from the top of an 
unfinished house. We dined in hearing of the guns at 6 in Paris, 
and reached here [Harrow] at 8 this morning. I hardly know 
what to say ; we have seen so much chat is interesting. I think 
I will give you first a rough outline of what we did, and then 
general impressions. 

The first and second days were devoted to going about, and 

looking at barricades, and getting views from inside. At first we 

were a little nervous about going in small streets and into rough 

districts, but we soon found out it was safe everywhere — except as 

regards shells, for we never ventured to go quite to the very west 

corner of Paris, where they kept always falling rather thick. 

We found out, however, one or two capital places for seeing 

from. Once or twice we ventured on a view from the Arc de 

Triomphe, where there was really very little danger, and a few 

sightseers were constantly clustering about it. Another time we 

got a porter of a house that had been abandoned to let us go and 

look out of its highest window, where we got very near the fighting. 

We were rather startled to find that a shell had burst a few days 

before actually in that very room ; but, as he said, it was an 

obus egare, a shell that had lost its way and was altogether 

exceptional. Once we got a good look over the walls by going 

and standing on a barricade that nobody was guarding, till a 

sentry found us out and turned us off. There was a grand view 

from Montmartre, which is a kind of citadel of Paris in the north, 

not fortified except now with strong barricades. It is the place 

where the cannon were kept at first which brought on all the 

trouble. This was rather far off; nearly a couple of miles from 

the nearest fighting, but it commanded a splendid view (especially 

with an opera glass) of the whole valley of the Seine west of Paris ; 

and as each shot was fired we could name the spot, and generally 

see where it hit ; and [we could] hear the mitrailleuses and the 

usillade distinctly, but on some days there was much more of it 



A MEMOIR 131 

than on others. Another interesting walk was down on the south 
side, where the forts of Vanves and Issy are. Here they did not 
mind our getting on the ramparts, and we could see the forts playing 
on the slopes beyond them where the enemy's batteries were. Two 
of the days we spent in going about outside [the walls], on the east 
side, among the Prussians, to look at the ruins of the war. One 
was devoted to the north-east, where Le Bourget is, the village 
which was so often taken and retaken, and where the Prussian 
guards got so cut up ; the other to the scene of the great sortie of 
December, the villages of Bry and Champigny at the south-east 
side, on the Marne. The desolation is as complete as you can con- 
ceive. The country indeed is recovering fast, except that so many 
trees are cut down ; but in some villages, for example Bry, there 
is hardly a house that has not suffered ; often a whole group 
absolutely reduced to rubbish or burnt. In one village we could 
not see a single house remaining in the half of it which was nearest 
the Prussians. One [house] struck us which, besides [being damaged 
by] shells, had its front door scored by bullets just like drops of 
thick rain ; and over one door was the significant placard ' Maison 
habitee.' We ate our lunch on a ruined wall over Champigny, 
just in front of a grave where fifty Prussians were buried, looking 
all over the south of Paris, five miles away where Vanves and 
Issy were firing, and listening at the same time to their reports 
and to a nightingale in the trees above us ! But I think our last 
day was the best ; we had gone out with the idea that there was to 
be an armistice, and we meant to get into Neuilly and see the effects 
of the fighting ; so we got outside and walked slowly towards the 
west side, where it all goes on. The guns did not stop, so we 
went slower and slower, till we began to think we could not safely 
venture nearer, when just in a village called Clichy we came full 
on a battery which was firing across the river. A friendly inhabi- 
tant showed us where we were safe and where not. ' That,' said 
he, ' is a vilain coin, a nasty corner ; the bullets come by constantly ; 
but if you get up into that unfinished house, and peep out from the 
top, you can see capitally.' So we got up with one or two men 
and a National Guard or two, and just below us at two hundred 
yards off was the battery at the bridge firing away, while the 
National Guards were taking rifle-shots across the river at the park 
of Asnieres whenever they saw a chance. There were no shells 
falling within nearly half a mile of us, and no bullets came near 
us, so we could not have had a better spot. It is curious to think 
that it was this time yesterday. 

K 2 



132 EDWARD BOWEN 

Now about politics. Paris is perfectly tranquil, well-governed, 
orderly. There is no crime, no pillage, except one or two forcible 
confiscations of semi-public property by central authority. Every- 
body was perfectly civil. Even the roughest sentry was good- 
humoured and polite ; and close by the Hotel de Ville the 
National Guards merely said gently, ' Move on, please, citoyens, 
move on ! ' Opinion is freely expressed. I repeatedly heard 
the Commune blamed in public and in private. On the whole, 
however, I think the Commune is not gaining ground. I came 
away with a tolerably clear idea of its chief men and its position, 
thanks to that introduction which I told you I had, and to constant 
newspaper reading — not to mention a republican club of which I 
went to a meeting, and where I heard rather good speeches, some 
eloquent and some distinctly thoughtful. Everybody is unanimous 
(except a few of the upper classes) in hatred of Versailles — Thiers 
especially, and Jules Pavre, and above all Picard ; but the Commune 
itself is not very strong, and has its own dissensions, and even 
while we were there a movement took place which seemed to 
throw power into the hands of the more violent section. So I 
don't think it can win. But it is very strong from a military point 
of view, and its soldiers fight well — there has been more loss of 
life than you would judge from the newspapers. I fear things will 
be worse before they are better, and I cannot see any solution 
without a good deal more fighting. 

Paris is half deserted. All the ' west-end ' is simply desolate. 
About half the shops are shut. There is not a single table d'hdte in 
Paris. Prices are rather high already. We only saw one private 
carriage the whole week, and that on the last day. About the 
Champs Elysees and near the fighting all except the poor people 
have gone away; and it is curious to see them walking about 
keeping a row of houses always close to shellward of them. In 
fact Paris is absolutely in the hands of its lower classes, who 
govern it with perfect order, and without half as much violence or 
crime as went on before, though not a single policeman exists in 
the city, and not a single court of justice is sitting. 



The scholastic work of the next two years (1871-1873) 
was very largely connected with the remodelling of the 
School regulations, which had been rendered necessary by 
the Public Schools Commission of 1861 and the consequent 
legislation. The report of the Commission had appeared 



A MEMOIE 133 

quite early in 1868, and in the same year an Act had been 
passed giving the governing bodies of the chief public schools 
powers to reconstitute themselves, and requiring them to do 
so before a specified date. These reconstituted bodies were 
then to draw up new regulations for their respective schools, 
subject to the approval of the Privy Council. Accordingly 
the reorganised governing body of Harrow were at this 
time engaged in framing fresh rules, but before finally 
passing them they very properly consulted the views of the 
staff of assistant masters, and submitted for their criticism 
a rough draft of the amended statutes. The memorandum 
which was sent in reply was signed on behalf of the assistant 
masters by the Eev. F. Eendall and Edward Bowen, the 
latter having been especially responsible for its composition. 
Many of the criticisms contained in it deal only with details 
or technicalities, and are of no public interest ; but it 
undoubtedly contains ample proof not only of Edward 
Bowen's statesmanlike view of the whole subject, but also 
of his lawyerlike capacity for detecting bad draftsmanship 
and inconsistencies, as well as a considerable power of deal- 
ing with finance. His general attitude towards the changes 
which were now set on foot may be thus briefly summarised. 1 

(1) The Belation of the School to the Town. — It was 
natural that the town should cling to a literal reading of 
the old charters. Edward Bowen, on the other hand, 
always held (a) that it was the intention of the founder 
that the School should be bond fide a grammar school, i.e. a 
school providing the necessary training for the universities, 
or at least supplying a higher education; (b) that in any 
case the new Act made the School henceforward national 
and not local. 

(2) Entrance Scholarships. — These did not for some 
time meet with universal acceptance at Harrow ; and till 
quite lately those hostile to them — on the general ground 
that they were not suitable to such a school as Harrow — 
retained an able and important representative even upon 
the governing body. But the report of the Commission had 

1 I owe this summary to Mr. Charles Colbeck, now senior master on the 
Modern Side at Harrow. 



134 EDWAED BOWEN 

pointed to the necessity of the system unless Eton, Win- 
chester, and Charterhouse, with their large foundations, 
were to be allowed to secure by their wealth the great 
majority of the most intellectual boys from the private 
schools. Unfortunately Harrow neither had then, nor has 
now, such endowments as to enable her to compete with 
these rich rivals on anything approaching equal terms ; and 
a scheme had to be devised to enable some kind of entrance 
scholarships to be offered. The plan which was actually 
adopted, with a view of partially providing the requisite 
funds, was to allow an extra boy to each house, but at con- 
siderably less than the usual charges. The idea was chiefly 
Edward Bowen's, and he, almost alone among his colleagues, 
always saw clearly that economically the arrangement was 
not a contribution by the house-master, but a tax upon the 
parents of the other boys ; and that therefore the limits to 
the working out of the proposal were to be found in the 
measure of claim possessed by those parents to the house- 
master's care and energy, and not in the willingness of the 
latter to accept additional burdens. Later, however, he 
found — and the majority of the staff found also — that in 
practice these scholarships — which were very few in number 
and of insufficient value — drew scarcely any boys to Harrow 
who could not have come without them, and he realised 
the importance of considerable modifications in the existing 
method. At the present time the provision of an adequate 
and satisfactorj?- system of entrance scholarships is one of 
the most important and pressing problems connected with 
Harrow. 

(3) A Conscience Clause. — The masters were not all 
of them unanimous on this point ; some desired a simple 
provision that any boy might be withdrawn from the chapel 
services or from religious instruction by his parents or 
guardians on conscientious grounds ; others wanted to go 
further, and to enable (1) the Headmaster to claim sufficient 
assurances that a boy so withdrawn should have instruction 
in his own religious belief, and (2) any house-master to decline 
to keep any such boy in his house. These two opposing 
views had found definite expression in an earlier memo- 



A MEMOIE 135 

randum to the Public Schools Commissioners themselves. 
Edward Bowen, it need hardly be said, held tenaciously 
that the conscience clause should have no such limiting 
provisions attached to it. The School was national, and 
should therefore be open to all creeds. He was conscious, 
indeed, of the practical difficulties, and was keenly anxious 
lest unrestricted admission should issue in a serious dis- 
location of the social arrangements and characteristics of the 
School — a dislocation bad and mischievous enough in day 
schools, almost fatal in those consisting wholly or mainly 
of boarders ; for example, he felt that the requirements of 
the Jewish Sabbath were such as to go far towards making 
the admission of Jews undesirable. But he was emphatic 
and resolute on the general principle — to which, it may be 
added, the clearest and most unequivocal expression has 
been given in the present regulations of the School. 

(4) The Status of Assistant Masters. — In the memo- 
randum to the School governors strong exception was 
taken to the provisions upon this point. Unfortunately 
those provisions were compulsory in view of the terms of' 
the Act of 1868 ; but they none the less seemed then, as 
they seem now, to those most closely affected by them, to 
be unnecessary and unjust. The passage in the memo- 
randum which deals with the point is as follows : 

"We desire to call your serious attention to the insecurity which 
the statutes admit into the position of assistant masters. Our 
staff contains as many as twenty-five University graduates, filling 
positions of important responsibility. The internal arrangement 
of the several boarding-houses is, as you are aware, confided almost 
entirely to the assistant masters in charge, and on them falls the 
entire pecuniary risk of building or renting, as well as furnishing, 
these houses; a risk which in some cases amounts to many 
thousand pounds. The service has hitherto been conducted on the 
principle of seniority, the most important posts being assigned to 
masters of many years' service. The position has hitherto been 
regarded as a permanent office, and a removal contingent only on 
failure of health, inefficiency, or misconduct ; and it is in reliance 
on this permanence that men enter on this calling as a provision 
for life, marry, invest their fortunes in it. Under the old statutes 
this permanence was secured, partly by the spirit (one master on 



136 EDWAED BOWEN 

the foundation having the same tenure as the headmaster), partly 
by a prescription which, not having been shaken by any head- 
master, carried practically the force of law. The Act of Parlia- 
ment, however, has assailed this prescription by destroying, 
wherever it existed, the legal status of assistant masters, and the 
prescription itself must follow in course of time. What then is to 
be the future position of an assistant master ? Are his prospects, 
so far as they depend on the school, to be placed absolutely at the 
mercy of any future headmaster ? The latter will often be young ; 
he may possibly be inexperienced ; but he would thus be invested 
with a power almost without example in the English Public Service, 
a power exceeding that of the Commander-in-Chief of the Army — 
that of the summary dismissal, on his own authority, of any 
member of a large and educated staff, while the governing body 
are precluded from hearing in his defence, or supporting by 
remonstrance, an old, it may be a valued, servant. No doubt the 
strict letter of the Act of Parliament might warrant such an 
interpretation ; but it must not be forgotten how clearly the Act 
lays down the principle of the responsibility of the headmaster 
for the acts of his government to the governing body. We are 
convinced that this responsibility ought to be impressed upon him 
at the time of his taking so important a step as the dismissal of an 
assistant : that the ground of it should be distinctly stated, and 
the assistant heard in his defence. It has been suggested that 
some such amended statute as the following might meet the case : 
' The assistant masters shall hold their office at the pleasure of the 
headmaster ; but if he sees cause to dismiss any assistant master 
of more than two years' standing, he shall state previously in 
writing the grounds of that dismissal to the assistant master. 
The assistant master shall have the right of laying such state- 
ment, together with a counter-statement of his own, before the 
governing body, and claiming their judgment on the case. The 
headmaster shall have power at his discretion, after receiving the 
judgment, either to recall the notice of dismissal, or to reinstate 
the assistant master if already dismissed.' 

No such amended statute was, however, adopted, and 
the danger of injustice continued to go, and still goes, un- 
restrained. Rugby troubles in 1873, and Eton troubles a 
little later, brought the question once more to the front, and 
on one of these occasions an attempt was made to obtain an 
Act of Parliament dealing with the grievance, but the Bill 
never reached, or at any rate never passed, a second reading. 
Edward Bowen was, as has been seen, quite willing to 



A MEMOIR 137 

co-operate with his colleagues in the profession in their 
endeavours to obtain a right of appeal to the governing 
body ; but his own view was that the best remedy was to 
be found in a somewhat different direction, and that a dis- 
tinct legal status should be assigned by Parliament to an 
assistant master which could be defended in the ordinary 
way. By this means the interference of the governors 
in the actual management of the school would be avoided 
— an interference which was, in his opinion, undesirable, 
it being for the governors to lay down general principles, 
but for the headmaster to apply them. Nothing, how- 
ever, has as yet been done, and it may perhaps be added 
that nothing is at present likely to be done. If some scandal 
should occur, if there should be some abuse by a head- 
master of his absolute powers, another Bill will no doubt be 
introduced. If it is fortunate enough on the ballot to secure 
first or second place on a Friday, it may possibly pass 
through the second stage in its parliamentary history ; 
but whether it ever gets any further will almost certainly 
depend on the Government, whose hands will already be 
full, and who will be thinking rather of ' the massacre 
of the innocents ' than of the adoption of other people's 
children. 



Edward Bowen's theory of teaching has already been 
noticed in connection with his essay, ' On Teaching by means 
of Grammar.' He felt from first to last that the burden 
placed upon the pupil was too heavy, and that wholly in- 
sufficient pains were taken to relieve him of the load of 
drudgery which simply broke his back. It was in pursuance 
of this theory that he attempted to obtain a reconsideration 
of the difficult question of 'cribs.' Most masters are against 
them. There is an idea that a boy's present struggles and 
miseries somehow bring about a measure of intellectual de- 
velopment to which otherwise he would not attain, and that 
it is a matter of secondary importance whether he finds his 
tasks tolerable or intolerable. It was only consistent with 
Edward Bowen's whole reading of the duties of a teacher 
that he should protest against such a notion. The work, he 



138 EDWAED BOWEN 

urged, was too hard, and because too hard, too slowly got 
through. ' Cribs ' made it at least twice as easy, and 
doubled or trebled the pace. He saw too that the common 
rule created a serious offence, difficult to detect, and as often 
as not committed with impunity. He considered that under 
the system in force boys were unnecessarily being led into 
temptation, nor could he shut his eyes to the very painful 
fact that a lad whose character had been seriously damaged 
by frequent yielding to this temptation, and afterwards to 
others for which it had been the preparation, had a just cause 
of complaint against the masters through whose methods he 
had been tempted in the first instance. ' "Woe to that man by 
whom the offence cometh.' After twelve years' experience he 
gave forcible expression to his views in a memorandum which 
he circulated privately among his colleagues, and which will 
be read with interest, at any rate by members of the scholastic 
profession. These views he never changed, and to some 
extent he was able to carry them into practice on ' the 
Modern Side,' where he allowed the Sixth Form to read 
Tacitus with a ' crib ; ' but he never succeeded in convert- 
ing the staff as a whole to them. The paper is dated 
1 November 11, 1870.' 

There are some considerations which seem to me to deserve to 
be taken into account when we consider the subject of trans- 
lations, but which I should be sorry to spend public time in 
urging at length viva voce ; I hope, therefore, that it will not be 
thought presumptuous if I print and circulate them, and beg for 
them a favourable hearing. 

We ought not to shut our eyes to the fact, that, if we do not 
allow and provide translations, we have at any rate no alternative 
method left of dealing with the subject. We must be all, I 
imagine, prepared to admit that punishment is quite useless. The 
reason is not far to seek. We cannot punish with a perfectly 
clear conscience. Not only is it impossible to be very severe with 
a fault when the number of detections is known to bear so small a 
proportion to that of the offences, but we are perplexed, both each 
for himself and still more as a body, by the feeling, that while we 
profess to regard it as an act of disobedience, it is in reality, and 
is felt by all the more sensitive boys to be, an act of unfairness. 
That the result is a capriciousness in our treatment of it which 



A MEMOIE 139 

has no parallel in our dealings with any other crime, there 
can be no doubt ; and if it were not for the bare chance of these 
remarks falling into any hands for which they are not intended, 
I could show that it is so to a startling extent. We cannot hope, 
then, to stamp out the practice by punishment. I have no more 
opportunities of forming a judgment than any other master, but, 
among the hundreds of boys with whom at various times I have 
talked on the subject, I do not remember that it ever occurred to 
a single one to suggest that punishment was of any use. Have 
we any hope in our own vigilance ? Experience tells us that this 
cannot be expected. Even granting — which could not be granted 
— that some twenty Form-masters would continue to take un- 
remitting pains to defeat the translationist, we have not the time 
or the power to do it With success, and the task is often a repulsive 
one, from its bringing us face to face with prevarication and false- 
hood. Something might no doubt be done by a bold attack on 
the conscience of the boys, and an appeal to their honour. Some- 
thing is always done by such appeals, both in this and other 
matters. But I wish I could express how strong is the appre- 
hension with which I, for one, regard them. Conscience and 
honour seem to me too serious things to be staked on a losing 
struggle. We ought surely to reflect when by such means a 
partial attack is made on a bad custom, what a terrible risk there 
is of a reaction which may carry away some part of the conscien- 
tious feeling along with it ; and it is always to be remembered 
that the more serious we make the fault, the more we increase 
the chance of denial. Is it not better even to live under the yoke 
of the Philistines than to take down the ark into a battle where 
we know beforehand that the chances are against us ? 

We are fairly beaten in the contest. 1 Bohnis too much for us. 
We have had even less chance than other schools, from having rich 
boys, and London so near. Translations swarm, and even if by 
a great effort, and at the risks above spoken of, we could destroy 
50 per cent, of them, in two years' time there would be just as 
many again. 

This being the case, ought we not to give up the struggle ? 
Does it seem right to the masters that by our own act, and with 
the aim of improving the scholarship of the cleverer scholars, we 
should put before every boy who comes here, weak or strong, a 

1 It will, however, be found later on that Edward Bowen, when at ' The 
Grove,' was singularly successful in his warfare with these translations, and 
that he kept his House entirely, or almost entirely, free from them. 



140 EDWAED BOWEN 

temptation to what most of them believe to be unfairness, which 
we know that a very large number will not be able to resist ? 
Has not a boy whose will becomes enfeebled by deceit, who is 
led from translations to positive cheating or to falsehood, who 
pursues for years a system of hypocrisy in work, a grave charge 
to bring against us for having created, for his very stumbling, the 
sin which began it all ? 

This is all irrespective of the intellectual question. Eor 
argument's sake it might be granted that scholarship would suffer 
by the change ; there is a point beyond which the claims of 
scholarship are not paramount. But it is a position which is at 
all events open to challenge. My own opinion, which I only offer 
as that of one out of twenty-five, is that a language is best learnt 
by means of translations. It is far too large a question to discuss 
here, and the opinion of those who read this is not likely to have 
been so hastily formed that a few words would change it ; but it is 
worth remembering that the two chief English authorities on 
educational subjects, Ascham and Locke, both believed in the 
system I am advocating. I am only able to offer the single 
experience of German on the Modern Side, which is so taught. 
Of the general result even here I cannot speak yet; but this 
much at all events may be said, that it is a most successful system 
for purposes of class. It is possible to make sure that every boy 
has learnt his lesson, to whatever extent one is prepared to en- 
force it : every boy may be ' put on ' once or oftener ; the lesson 
is doubled or trebled ; the construing takes less than half an hour, 
and the other half can be given to the parsing of a special piece 
(set beforehand) and general teaching. If a boy is ' turned,' he can 
come and say it again out of school, and to hear a morsel here 
and there takes about two minutes. So enhanced is the control 
over the preparation of the work, that my one fear, if the system 
should be established, is the power which would be given to 
masters of an energetic turn of mind over their Forms. If it is 
desirable to give some puzzle- work to the cleverer boys, unseen 
pieces are a resource always ready to hand. And for the scholars, 
it must not be forgotten that double lessons means a double dose 
of subjunctives, every peculiarity encountered double as often, 
and some insight into the literature into the bargain. 

I really think that we might expect a large and permanent im- 
provement in school morality, as regards fairness and truthfulness, 
by the reform which I am pleading. Perhaps I may be forgiven 



A MEMOIE 141 

for saying, that at the same time I should make a point of en- 
deavouring to avoid such temptations to fraud as (1) setting under 
any circumstances for work out of school any book to which there 
exists a key ; (2) allowing boys in examination under any circum- 
stances (short of a moral certainty that they are safe) to do the 
same work as their neighbours at the same time ; (3) exacting from 
boys, or encouraging them to offer, normal statements that -they 
have done ' an hour's work ' at any subject ; (4) a harsh view of 
prompting or of giving moderate help. If we could carry a few 
such reforms as these, and remove the great stumbling-block of 
forbidden translations — I hope I am not too sanguine, but I do 
fancy that Astraea might perhaps return again, and a boy on 
coming here might learn, as one of his first school lessons, 
candour and good faith. 

Another contribution of value and interest to contem- 
porary scholastic questions was made by him in the spring of 
1872. This was an essay on the supervision of the Public 
Schools by the Universities, published by him under the 
title (' confessedly adopted ad invidiam '), ' The Proposed 
Control of the Public Schools by the Universities. ' l The 
scheme, so far as it was ever formulated, had its origin in some 
suggestions made by a committee of the annual Headmasters' 
Conference — suggestions which certainly appeared to go 
beyond their instructions, but which excited a good deal of 
attention, and undoubtedly met with a good deal of support. 
It was in 1870, at the conference at Sherborne, that the 
committee had been appointed ' to negotiate ' — such is 
Edward Bowen's account of their duties — * certain practical 
arrangements with the Latin Professors at Oxford and 
Cambridge, with the Universities themselves, with various 
colleges, with the Government, and with other examin- 
ing bodies.' These arrangements related to matriculation 
examinations so far as the Universities were concerned, 
but to leaving examinations by the Government. The 
Committee, however, had invited the Universities ' to 
inspect the schools and report on their efficiency, and, 
in addition to this, to hold examinations of all boys at 
two stages of their school career, with a view to awarding 

1 The essay will be found among the Appendices. 



142 EDWAED BOWEN 

certificates of satisfactory attainments.' It was these pro- 
posals—' originating in a manner which it is not unfair to 
describe as "casual"' — which seemed to Edward Bowen to 
amount to an attempt to place the Public Schools under the 
' control ' of the two Universities, and the essay is a vigor- 
ous criticism of the scheme. It is marked by all his usual 
breadth of view, and also by his capacity for banter and 
sarcasm. He makes fun of the suggested inspector — 

With the office merely of a roaring lion, who is to go about 
seeking some one to examine, grasping at an induction for morsels 
of evidence, listening to a lesson here, reading an exercise there, 
and returning to his Athens much (as I should venture to picture 
it) with the feeling that Peisthetserus must have experienced after 
his sojourn in the Eegion of the Birds, with the sense that he has 
been listening for a couple of days and nights to one universal 
gabble ! 

Again, he draws an amusing picture of the go-ahead 
master who is possessed by a desire to introduce the study of 
Scandinavianism into his school. This imaginary innovator 
is represented as ' finding every advantage in this study that 
can be offered by the most devoted professor of the established 
curriculum.' There is obscure history to be waded through. 
There are dialects to be learnt 'which are dead as door-nails.' 
It has no connection whatever with modern thought. All 
this makes the supposed master an enthusiast in teaching 
it. 'I awaken interest, I train to logical sequence, I load 
with varied information, I exercise cultivated imagination ; 
my pupils write verses like the Eddas, and get by heart 
mythology like a Skald.' Now what would be the result of 
University inspection upon this daring educational experi- 
ment, which, however, might have a claim to a fair trial ? 

A college Fellow, or it may be a country clergyman, comes 
down to judge the teaching of the school at which I am engaged. 
As it is not to be supposed that he will know the ancient Norse, 
he will find it convenient to take, as a specimen, some other por- 
tion of my work than that in the results of which I take such 
pride ; or else he will put me aside altogether, and devote himself 
to some non- Scandinavian class ; and all that the inquiring 
parents are likely to know of my splendid successes is that my 
neighbour's form are found to be good in their Greek. Or — should 



A MEMOIR 143 

it happen that the Board of Control at the Universities have 
searched out and sent down some scholar who has devoted himself 
to the same results as I, who comes, hears, sees, and passes a 
judgment which is probably valueless from the absence of a stan- 
dard of comparison — much light will the public receive from the 
assurance that my work is excellent, and — ex pede Herculem — the 
school is admirably conducted, when it is notorious that among 
my colleagues he knows nothing of A, who goes to sleep over his 
Virgil ; B, who puts the cricketers systematically first ; or C, 
whose class-room is a bear garden. More probable than either 
hypothesis is the third : that the inspector will appear some day 
provided with an array of established tests in classical scholarship, 
and a couple of questions in Icelandic literature which he has 
begged or stolen from Dr. Dasent ; that the report which will 
appear of my work will run, ' Moderate success in the normal 
subjects ; shows some curious Scandinavian energy ; ' that with a 
sigh and a blush I shall give up my northern studies, abandon 
Wodin and Thor, stick to the construction of the prolative and 
quid-quod-qualitive verbs, and the light of Scandinavian learning 
will be quenched in schools for ever ! 

Such an illustration is of course almost perverse — as 
indeed it was meant to be ; and the whole essay is written 
with a light hand. But the paper is none the less a very 
serious and earnest advocacy of two great ideas. Of these, 
the first was that the influence of outside inspection was to 
cramp and harass the teachers. As for control by Oxford 
and Cambridge, those seats of learning had better devote 
themselves to the task of broadening their own curriculum 
before attempting or being permitted to impose their yoke 
upon the Public Schools. If there were to be inspection it 
would be preferable that it should emanate from a Govern- 
ment office ; but the existing system of education in schools 
was too much ' on its trial ' for it to be desirable that a dead 
hand should be brought in from any quarter to destroy 
by its touch new efforts and experiments. Secondly, the 
anxiety for inspection was based upon an erroneous estimate 
of the value of mere instruction. As a matter of fact, in- 
spection could not gauge the excellence or defects of the 
instruction ; but even if it could, such excellence or defects 
constituted but very indifferent evidence of the real merits 
and success of a school. The component parts of a boy's 



144 EDWARD BOWEN 

education were manifold; and actual instruction was only 
one of them. With this one part inspection dealt — probably 
inefficiently and unsatisfactorily ; but with the other parts it 
could not deal. The merits of a school depended on much 
beyond the pedagogy — on the character of the traditions, the 
general standard of intellectual interest, the discipline, the 
personnel of the masters, the vigorous athleticism, the general 
good ordering of the school regime, plus, of course (and here 
comes in a touch of the characteristic banter), 'what I 
understand to be the very cream of University distinction, the 
proper appreciation of the sound of the Eoman consonants.' 
All, therefore, that was best and most important in connec- 
tion with a school was beyond inspection, and yet inspection 
was being asked for in order that a parent might have 
some sort of guide as to the school to which his son should 
be sent. Edward Bowen, however, though strongly adverse 
to the proposals of the Headmasters' Committee, frankly 
admitted that educational reforms were required. 'I am 
not one of those ' — he says towards the end of his paper — 
• who believe that the schools can be safely left altogether to 
themselves, or that the Universities have no duties in con- 
nection with them.' He goes on to mention several matters 
in which he counsels alteration. Among them are (1) the 
establishment of ' a Council of Education, under the depart- 
ment of the Minister of Education, charged with the duty of 
inspecting the public schools of the country in all matters 
that relate to finance ; ' and (2) the lowering of the age for 
students at the Universities — a change which he advocated 
in the belief that it would mean that the number of those 
able to avail themselves of an University education would 
be greatly increased. 



The next few years were, on the whole, years of quiet 
service to the School and of unostentatious devotion to the 
requirements of school-life. The question of inspection did 
indeed remain a somewhat burning one, but Edward Bowen 
had ' said his say,' and he made no further contribution of 
note or importance to the discussion. Scholastic contro- 



A MEMOIK 145 

versy at Cambridge introduced an element of excitement, but 
they did not call out from him any essay. The question at 
issue was the relief of candidates for an Honour Degree 
from the necessity of passing an examination in Greek at an 
early stage in their University career; and it was a con- 
troversy which very gravely affected the Modern Side at 
Harrow, where it was found that the tax which was placed 
by the existing regulation upon the energies of those intend- 
ing to go to Cambridge was unduly heavy. The time of 
these pupils was wasted getting up, merely for the purposes 
of ' the Previous Examination,' the rudiments of a subject 
which they did not intend seriously to pursue. This reform 
therefore at the University was anxiously awaited by Edward 
Bowen and by all friends of ' Modern Sides.' It was 
awaited in vain. The proposed abolition had indeed the 
support of all the best-known headmasters in the country — 
Dr. Hornby, Dr. Butler, Dr. Bidding, Dr. Walker, Dr. Jex 
Blake, Dr. Abbott, Mr. H. W. Eve ; while it was cordially 
approved by such leaders of thought and educational in- 
terests as Lord Aberdare, Matthew Arnold, Thomas Carlyle, 
Lord Frederick Cavendish, Charles Darwin, the Bev. J. 
Llewelyn Davies, the present Archbishop of Canterbury 
(Dr. Temple), W. E. Forster, Lord Houghton, Lord Law- 
rence, Professor Huxley, Professor Jebb, Dean Stanley, 
Mr. (now Sir) George Trevelyan, and Dr. Vaughan. But, 
influential as were these names, the movement failed. All 
the conservatism of the country clergy was aroused in op- 
position to it. Considerations connected with the Greek 
Testament were introduced and pressed. It became a con- 
test — as was observed at the time — between ' the Church 
and the world,' and ' the Church ' won. On three separate 
occasions the feeling of the graduates of the University was 
tested. It was on the first of these that the reformers came 
nearest to the attainment of their objects ; but though they 
were not far from success they fell short of it, and have 
never since made good the necessary ground. 

At Harrow itself in the seventies there were no striking 
scholastic changes. The work of the Modern Side was 
being steadily, but very quietly, developed, without any 

L 



146 EDWAED BOWEN 

special characteristics attaching to the development. The 
success, however, of ' the Side ' was as yet not quite assured, 
and it was during the first half of this decade that the 
temporary decrease in numbers set in to which Edward 
Bowen alludes in his ' Memorandum.' But the devotion and 
perseverance of himself and his colleagues were not to be 
without their reward, and in 1876 the tide again turned, 
and has since then never ceased to flow. 

Athletics continued to divide Edward Bowen's interests 
with school- work ; and his influence upon athleticism at 
Harrow, though not supreme, was at any rate considerable. 
It was, however, mainly indirect. He was very strongly of 
opinion that any immediate interference by the masters in 
the matter of the games was a mistake — indeed, that such 
interference was outside their proper sphere. The assent of 
the headmaster to any change in the method or rules of a 
game was one thing ; it was another for him or his assistants 
to compel any alteration. Edward Bowen worked to get 
anything which he thought desirable done by the boys them- 
selves, and to all appearance on their own initiative. A 
chat with the captain of the School eleven, or of a House 
team, would be the opportunity of putting ideas into the 
boy's head which had their due results in the course of time. 
But direct proposals from him were rare ; still more rare was 
any direct opposition. 

He was an excellent football player, and took a regular 
part in the game from his earliest years at Harrow to within 
six weeks of his death. At twenty-five it was natural that 
he should play ; that at sixty-five he should still be doing 
so was extraordinary. But so it was : 

The fields with his presence are haunted 

Where daily to football he pass'd, 
Through forty long winters undaunted, 

The playmate of youth to the last. 1 

When he first went as master he used to play ' forward ; ' 
but about 1872 he took to playing 'back' — the only 
instance of caution which he ever showed in connection 

1 Memorial Verses, by E. W. H. 



A MEMOIE 147 

with athletics. He retained, however, his fleetness of foot, 
and when he was well over forty, he was in a spurt almost, 
if not quite, as fast as an exceptionally fast ' forward ' who 
was at the time in the School team. He possessed also re- 
markable powers of endurance. The debauch of football 
which he instituted as an annual occurrence, on the first 
day of the Christmas holidays, was something till then 
unheard of. The game lasted from ten till four, the players 
stopping as often as they liked, and for as long as they liked, 
for refreshments. Edward Bowen himself played through- 
out without intermission — six hours of continuous football ! 
He was, too, one of the inventors and lawgivers of ' Asso- 
ciation ' football, though in later years he felt deeply the 
degradation involved for that branch of the game by the 
widespread betting and corruption which it was notorious 
were frequently connected with it. He would probably have 
opposed the substitution of either the ' Kugby ' or the ' Asso- 
ciation ' game for that traditional at Harrow ; but his oppo- 
sition to the introduction of the ' Association ' rules would 
unquestionably have been especially strong, on the ground 
of the importance of keeping the School clear of a form of 
athleticism which was known to be steeped at times in dis- 
honour and disgrace. 

In cricket he was for many years a first-rate field ; though 
a very unconventional bat, whose methods were not always 
looked upon with favour. He never bowled, even in an 
emergency. For some time he used to field ' in the country,' 
and during that period was one of the finest ' long-legs ' ever 
seen. In the early sixties the All England Eleven played 
Twenty-Two of Harrow and District, and Edward Bowen's 
work in the long-field is said to have been wonderful. Later 
on (in the seventies) he generally kept wicket, where he was 
extraordinarily rapid — so rapid that he was sometimes ac- 
cused of taking the ball before it had actually passed the 
stumps. He did not indeed claim that he had never missed 
a catch there, but he once said in his old age that he had, to 
the best of his recollection, never dropped one in the long- 
field on the Harrow cricket-ground. As a judge of the game 
he was excellent, though here also, as elsewhere, an element 

l2 



148 EDWAED BOWEN 

of unconventionality would make its way in. He once 
published some ' Notes on Placing the Field ' for the guidance 
of one of the Harrow captains, 1 in which he shows complete 
knowledge of the scientific details of the game, however 
questionable his orthodoxy here and there. ' A bowler is 
indispensable ; but the same can hardly be said, absolutely 
and universally, of any other place in the field. I once 
remember, with a good man in, and on a good ground, taking 
away point and sending him deep extra cover-point, and it 
answered wonderfully.' He endeavoured to get this done in 
the course of a somewhat recent match with Eton, when 
runs were coming freely on a wicket which was like a 
billiard-table. ' It is quite obvious,' he said rapidly, during 
the interval for luncheon, to an old captain of the eleven, 
1 that we must take point off and put him down by the 
scoring-box.' The old Harrovian, however, was disposed to 
demur, and he seems to have been supported by other 
authorities ; anyhow the public were deprived of an interest- 
ing surprise. Other very characteristic notes are : ' Don't 
have general consultations (though a quiet word or two with 
a trusted mate doesn't hurt), unless you are really in grave 
doubt what to do ; but remember that " falling to pieces " is 
generally the result of want of inventiveness in the captain.' 
1 If a catch is missed, it does no harm to suggest an excuse 
to the miserable criminal.' ' Every one is allowed to lose 
his temper, if he likes, when the match is well over, and 
there is no one by.' His interest in the match at Lord's was 
unsurpassed by that of boy or colleague. Among the most 
delightful surroundings in which he was ever seen were his 
luncheon parties at Lord's. He always had a small carriage in 
some distant corner, 'far from the madding crowd,' or as far 
as possible, where there were hurried refreshments and hurried 
conversations over the progress of the game. Some whim- 
sical invitation would have been sent out, such as ' Lunch, 
low carriage, corner of Block B ; solid and serious ; will 
you serio- solidify ? ' or ' Lunch on Friday and Saturday ; 

1 Mr. Cyril Buxton, afterwards captain of the Cambridge Eleven. His 
death in early manhood was a deep and lasting grief to Edward Bowen and to 
a wide circle of friends. 



A MEMOIR 149 

Solidity permeated by Punctuality, and Efficacy graced by 
Expedition. Will you give me the pleasure of seeing you? ' 
and in response there would be a select gathering of masters 
and friends and old pupils, together with some three or four 
boys who had no one else to go to. • Forsan et hsec olim 
meminisse juvabit.' '0 the great days in the distance 
enchanted.' His acquaintance with the precedents of the 
match was almost unrivalled. In the ' Notes on Placing the 
Field,' just referred to, he recalls how ' Money in the 1867 
match with extraordinary boldness and effect took away a 
man in order to induce a batsman to play badly.' He had 
a collection of the scoring cards which extended over many 
years. Indeed, his care for the issue of the annual struggle 
was such that those two days became days of real strain, 
in which the stress and anxiety altogether outweighed the 
pleasure and the excitement. Some of his lines on the 
match of 1878 — which Harrow only won with difficulty by 
the small margin of twenty runs — scarcely go beyond his own 
real mind upon the matter : 

What is it ? forty, thirty more ? 

You in the trousers white, 
What did you come to Harrow for 

If we lose the match to-night ? 
If a finger's grasp, as a catch comes down, 

Go a thousandth part astray — 
Heavens ! to think there are folks in town 

Who talk of the game as play ! l 

1 It is in connection with this match that the following story is told of 
Mr. Robert Grimston— whose close connection with Harrow cricket will be 
referred to later on, a propos of some beautiful memorial lines written by 
Edward Bowen. Mr. Grimston would never go to the actual match at Lord's ; 
the tension was as a rule more than he knew how to bear. But on this occasion 
Harrow appeared at one time to be winning easily, and some friend telegraphed 
the fact to him, and urged him to come up. He did so, and during the Saturday 
afternoon was a prominent figure on one of the front seats of the Pavilion. 
Eton, however, made an unexpected bid for victory, and scored all but twenty- 
one of the required runs. Mr. Grimston remained in his place during the 
critical fourth innings ; but when it was over, and the last Eton wicket had 
fallen, he took off his well-known top-hat, wiped the perspiration from his 
massive brow, and said, • Well, I do think they might have spared me that 
hour's agony.' 



150 EDWARD BOWEN 

On one occasion, the last match which Edward Bowen 
lived to see — when Harrow won by a single wicket — he and 
others endeavoured, as they went back in the train, to recall 
exactly how the last four or five ' overs ' had gone. He 
was too exhausted to do so, and it was not until he had 
had food that he succeeded in reconstructing in his memory 
the details of those few decisive minutes. It was much the 
same all through. No boy in the School took greater interest 
in the games than he ; no lad in the eleven looked forward 
more anxiously than he to those fateful days at Lord's. That 
such an attitude towards athletics increased his hold upon 
the School goes without saying ; but it was not for this 
purpose that he thus interested himself. He cared for 
athletics for their own sake, believed in them, desired to 
promote them. He had no sympathy with the commonplace 
talk about their undue supremacy ; he had no wish to see 
them lose any of their pre-eminence. And in the seventies he 
did not a little to develop the games in connection with the 
younger boys, and to interest their elders in their fortunes and 
efforts. He instituted an ' Infants' ' cricket match, for lads 
under fifteen on January 1 of the current year. It was 
followed by ' Ponsonby's Colts,' for whom, however, the 
limit was sixteen. At football he started the ' Torpids ' — 
which were ties between House and House, but played 
during the Easter Term by those who had not yet completed 
two years in the School. To the winning team in this 
latter case he invariably gave a breakfast, which consisted of 
a large number of courses — they were identical every year 
and had always to be got through in half an hour — and ended 
with a draught of claret out of the great silver goblet which 
had been his Declamation Prize at Cambridge. The wine 
was duly drunk as a loving-cup, the drinker rising in his 
place and two boys standing by him, one on each side [' to 
prevent him being stabbed in the back ']. It might indeed 
have been the subject of an Academy picture — the famous 
master at the head of the table, and • the eleven small shy 
boys, to most of whom at least he was a stranger and a 
mystery, wondering partly what his quick speech said, still 



A MEMOIR 151 

more what his sly humour meant,' and the drinking of the 
loving-cup with all the old-world ceremony. 

Another institution — though it came rather later, a little 
outside this particular period of his life — was the ' Ones.' 
This competition, like ' the Torpids,' came in the Easter 
Term, and had besides its own immediate interest the 
further advantage of doing something to enliven what is 
usually, from the athletic point of view, an unsatisfactory 
quarter. It consisted of a series of ties between single 
football players, whose contests took place on small grounds 
with wide goal-posts, and lasted no longer than five minutes. 
All the ties were played off in an afternoon — the trium- 
phant victor receiving one or more of Caldecott's picture- 
books, while ' defeated players might eat buns after four 
o'clock at their own expense.' Each year — usually in 'the 
merry month ' of February — some brilliantly humorous 
notice would appear on the School gates, which showed that, 
in addition to all his other capacities, the compiler would 
have been incomparable as editor of ' Punch.' The follow- 
ing may serve as a sample : 

THE ONES 
Thuesday, Febeuaey 16, 1893 

The Ones ones more ! Rush to the Field of Glory ! But first 
pay 6d. by Tuesday evening. Football field (real field) — unless 
bad weather (real bad). 

Ties given out on the ground, 2.15, amid great excitement. 
Hair pulled out in handfuls (real hair). 

40 feet by 30 ; goals 8 feet. Prizes — each winner of 1st tie, 
6d. ; final winner, two picture-books of Caldecott. 

"Umpires as useful and humble as usual. Five minutes ; if 
tie, go on till decided. Then begin again. 

Then comes the Procession. 

The Procession will be headed by any of the tailers. Then 
the Band. They will march to the Bull Field (real bull). A 
flourish of horns, and the Band will get the correct pitch. 

Three Charity Removes. Winners of Prize Poems. Persons 
in Love. Fishes and Mermaids. Oysters, in Upper and Lower 
Shells. 



152 EDWARD BOWEN 

Those who have passed in Swimming (in Summing dress). 
If there are too few who can swim, Harrow will be made one of 
the Sink Ports. 

Several other people cheering. 

Animals. The hip-hip-hippopotamus. 

Dicky-birds, argent and gules. Crows. Eooks, cawing. The 
captain-commandant of the caw. Should a dog come on the 
ground, he will take out his sword, lunge, and drive it home ! 
Probably in a Buss. 

The rest of the Square will be rooted to the spot with terror. 
They must extract their square roots, and then go home. 

Music as usual ; louder if possible. Air, ' No, I do not know 
John Peel and do not wish to.' To be followed by the Hailstone 
Chorus (real Hailstones). Then speeches, during which the 
company will disperse. 

The result of the Ones will be announced immediately the 
competition is over, but it will not be known in Uganda and the 
Orange-peel River till much later. 

All seats free. Children half-price. No cards. 

The competition, however, was after some fifteen years 
of existence deliberately abandoned by its originator. The 
exhaustion involved in it was too great for the boys, short 
as was the time allotted to each single tie ; and it was 
found that excessive fatigue sometimes deprived the best 
and most active player of the honour and renown which 
ought to have been his, and gave them to a lazier, and there- 
fore less worn-out, exponent of the game. 

Another example of the whimsical fun which his versa- 
tility would introduce into school-life is to be found in an 
examination paper which he once set upon the subject 
of cricket. It may, perhaps, be said that it has as yet not 
been introduced into any scholarship examination, though 
doubtless Edward Bowen would have regarded a thorough 
knowledge of cricket as indispensable to a creditable or 
useful membership of the School ; and there is certainly 
something to be said for the proposition that a lad who 
could deal with such conundrums as these would be as 
likely to make his way in the world as another who was 
versed in • the doctrine of the enclitic De,' but ignorant 
of the rules of the Marylebone Cricket Club, or of their 



A MEMOIR 153 

possible bearing upon unheard-of situations. Here is the 
paper : 

1. A no-ball is bowled ; batsman runs out, wicket-keeper 
catches it, and stumps him. Umpire says, ' Not out — it touched 
his wrist.' Was it out ? 

2. Batsman takes guard 1-g yards to leg, and bats there. A 
ball almost grazes the off stump. Is it a wide ? 

3. They were just in the middle of the second run when one 
of them was bowled out (happened in a county match). Is that 
true? 

4. Player is running, wicket-keeper gets ball. Is it out if bails 
are dislodged (a) by earthquake, (b) by batsman's bat thrown at 
them? 

5. Very slow ball bowled; batsman runs halfway out and 
misses it ; wicket-keeper runs to help it with his toe into wicket, 
which it hits. Is it out (a) if his toe did help it along, (b) if it 
didn't ? 

6. Partner backs up halfway ; wicket-keeper tosses back ball ; 
bowler puts down his own wicket by happy thought. Is it out ? 

7. A, who is generally credible, says he was once bowled out 
by a wide. Do you believe him ? 

8. If two batsmen walk off simultaneously to have a drink just 
before ' over ' is called, which is out ? 

9. My partner hits high catch. I judiciously tread on bowler's 
toes, who misses it ; then asks umpire to give me out for doing so. 
Does he ? 

10. One bail being off, may you run out a man by dislodging 
the other ? 

11. Last ball of match is a no-ball ; batsman hits it and gets 
run out in the first run. What is scored, and was he out ? 

12. Prove from Plautus (' Most.' 3. 2. 144), Horace (' A.P.' 343), 
Juvenal (3. 213), and Cicero (' Manil.' 12. 34) that the wickets were 
pitched, one of the field caught everything, a distinguished 
magistrate scattered the bails, and an unparalleled number of runs 
were made. 

(M.C.C. rules must be quoted where necessary.) 

Another institution which owed its existence to him, and 
which was so peculiarly his that no endeavour has been, or 
will be, made to carry it on, was that of tree-planting by 
successful batsmen. The honour was bestowed upon any 
boy on the first occasion of his making fifty in a school match ; 



154 EDWAED BOWEN 

it was bestowed only once, and under no other conditions 
than those of a match with a foreign team. The whole 
of one side of the ' Sixth Form ' and ' Philathletic ' grounds 
is lined with the trees which commemorate the first fifties 
or more made by various members of the eleven upon what 
is at best a slow and difficult wicket. Some ceremony used 
to be observed at the planting, which took place at the end 
of the summer term. There was a gathering of the chief 
cricketers, a little claret-cup was supplied, and the fortunate 
planter was required to make a brief speech, which was 
usually in the same terms (' I plant this tree'). Edward 
Bowen, too, for many years gave a small silver cup for the 
best catch ; but in this case the custom is not to be broken 
through, one of his colleagues having stepped into his place. 
The cup had engraven on it an open left hand — suggestive 
of a left-handed piece of work — and it was always awarded 
by the members of the eleven themselves, the only condition 
being that they must select some definite catch, and not 
bestow the prize for general proficiency and merit. Again, 
indirectly but very materially, Edward Bowen helped all 
the cricketers by the institution in 1876 of the celebrated 
' Cricket Bill,' which all visitors to the Harrow cricket grounds 
on half-holidays are duly taken to see, and by means of 
which some five hundred boys or more can be called over by 
a single master in less than two minutes, and by two or 
three masters in less than one. Previously the cricket used 
to be interrupted at 3.45 p.m. Boots had to be changed and 
all the players had to toil up the hill to answer their names 
in the School yard in the ordinary way. The result was that 
the interrupted games were often not resumed, or only 
partially resumed. Now, however, the interruption does not 
exceed five miuutes or so ; while for the members of the 
eleven, or of ' the Sixth Form game,' there is no interruption 
at all, since they are excused attendance. The organisation is 
of the simplest kind, and always works without a hitch. The 
boys stand in order along the edge of the large field, divided 
into groups of six or seven. Each group has its distinctive 
number and its ' shepherd,' who stands a little in front of his 
flock. The master who calls the ' Bill ' — Edward Bowen 



A MEMOIR 155 

invariably did so himself, year after year — passes rapidly 
along the line, and the 'shepherds,' giving the number of the 
group, say either 'All here, sir!' or 'One absent,' 'Two 
absent,' as the case may be. The flocks then disperse, while 
the ' shepherds ' whose folds have not been complete go up to 
the master, and give in the name of the missing lamb. It 
may be added that no case of attempted dishonesty has- ever 
been known in connection with the ' shepherds,' and that even 
a mistake through carelessness is of the rarest occurrence. 
The success of the ' Bill ' requires of course, in this and in 
other respects, the co-operation of the boys ; but it is to their 
own advantage that such co-operation should be given, and 
it has never been withheld. 

In yet another form of athletics Edward Bowen continued 
to take a prominent part. He was a very great walker. 
His early feats in this respect have already been noticed, but 
though he did not in these later years attempt to compete 
with the endurance of his efforts as an undergraduate, yet 
he did an immense amount of walking. He kept a map of 
his tours on foot in England and "Wales, of which he had 
gone round the entire coast, as well as over a great deal of 
the country inland. Some favourite pupil would perhaps be 
his comrade on these occasions, or sometimes it would be a 
small party of two or three or four that he took with him. 
One such expedition still remains vivid in the memory of a 
companion — a boy in the School at the time. 1 It was to the 
Botallack mine in Cornwall in the Easter holidays of 1863. 
The very day after the visit there occurred in this mine a 
fatal accident in which several lives were lost. The chain 
attached to the car which had lowered Edward Bowen and 
his youthful companions with perfect safety only twenty-four 
hours previously suddenly snapped, and all the occupants 
were hurled to instant death. Edward Bowen at once 
by means of a letter to the ' Times ' endeavoured to set 
on foot a fund ' to relieve the wives and children of those 
strong husbands and fathers whose bodies now lie dashed to 
pieces two hundred fathoms below the waves ; 2 and whose 

1 Mr. G. Kennedy, now a Metropolitan Police Magistrate. 

2 The mine runs under the sea. 



156 EDWAED BOWEN 

souls may God receive.' But the boys not infrequently 

found these long walks extremely hard work. Possibly, as 

in the case of the ' Ones,' the exertion involved was now and 

then really too much for them. Edward Bowen, however, 

had a great belief in physical strain of this kind ; he desired 

that the boys should learn pluck and gain stamina — ' youth 

be bearer soon of hardihood ' — and he was not disposed to 

pay too much attention to weary limbs and aching feet. He 

would always make his way as far as possible straight across 

country. A notice ' No thoroughfare ' had for him no other 

meaning than that there was obviously an outlet at the other 

end ; and the amount of trespassing which he did might well 

have startled even a hardened poacher. But to avoid ' the 

hard high ' was a golden rule which was not lightly broken 

through, and with the aid of a small compass he pushed 

along over meadows and through copses and down grassy 

paths towards his goal. It did not always prove the quickest 

route in practice, whatever its advantages in theory — that, 

however, was a minor point. The major consideration was 

the absence of stones and dust. Afternoon tea was a much 

esteemed institution on these expeditions. It was usually at 

some wayside inn, in the small shabby coffee room with its 

few prints and cane-bottomed chairs and horsehair sofa. As 

likely as not a worn-out lad would be stretched on the sofa, 

at first almost too tired to eat, but gradually giving in to 

persuasive persistence, and at last finding himself sufficiently 

restored to take up the march again. And all the while 

there would be the kindly, amusing, vigorous head of the 

party, dispensing the tea (being unique in his manner of 

doing even this), and keeping the various members bright, 

interested, good-tempered. There is now in the writer's 

possession a briar stick, worn down quite short, which 

Edward Bowen often carried with him on his walks, 

and which has round it a silver band with the names of 

some of the places to which it had accompanied its owner. 

The map, however — to which reference has been made, 

and which was known to many old friends and pupils — 

is missing, and in all probability will now not be found. 

Otherwise it might have been well worth while, in view 



A MEMOIE 157 

of its interesting and remarkable character, to have repro- 
duced it. 

These years (1872-1877) saw the birth of several of his 
most famous songs. In 1872 came ' Forty Years On,' the 
most celebrated of all. Later songs may contain individual 
lines, or a single stanza, which taken separately reach even 
a greater height than is attained by this noble piece of 
work ; yet judged as a whole this song may justly rank as 
the finest which he ever wrote, and it would perhaps be no 
exaggeration to speak of it as the grandest in modern English 
literature. It is based upon the experiences of the football 
field, and suggests the memories of football struggles, foot- 
ball defeats, football victories, which will linger with old 
Harrovians forty years after their school-life has ended. It 
has become the national anthem of Harrow, and is always 
sung on great occasions, the boys and the Old Harrovians 
standing for it. 

Forty years on, when afar and asunder 

Parted are those who are singing to-day, 
When you look back, and forgetfully wonder 

What you were like in your work and your play ; 

Then, it may be, there will often come o'er you 

Glimpses of notes like the catch of a song — 

Visions of boyhood shall float them before you, 

Echoes of dreamland shall bear them along. 

Follow up ! Follow up ! Follow up ! Follow up ! 

Till the field ring again and again 
With the tramp of the twenty-two men, 
Follow up ! Follow up ! 

Like so much of the best poetical workmanship, the song 
may in part owe its shaping to the personal circumstances of 
the author. ' Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth 
speaketh.' Edward Bowen was writing it during the 
summer holidays while on a tour in Switzerland. One of 
his colleagues who was with him recalls the fact that his 
physical activity was not quite what it had been, and that 
he was at times rather outpaced in climbing by his junior 
companions. The realisation of this advance in years is 
perhaps responsible for the splendid last verse : 



158 EDWAED BOWEN 

Forty years on, growing older and older, 

Shorter in wind, as in memory long, 
Feeble of foot and rheumatic of shoulder, 

What will it help you that once you were strong ? 
God give us bases to guard and beleaguer, 

Games to play out, whether earnest or fun ; 
Fights for the fearless, and goals for the eager, 

Twenty, and thirty, and forty years on ! 
Follow up ! &c. 

There are two other reminiscences in connection with 
its composition which will be of interest, at any rate to 
those who have many a time joined in singing it. The 
first of these is that a verse or two of it, written out specially 
large and clear — Edward Bowen's handwriting was gene- 
rally very small and cramped — was sent by its author to 
Mr. John Farmer to be set to music, just as the latter was 
corning away from choir practice in chapel. Mr. Farmer 
looked at the manuscript, and turning round asked charac- 
teristically if any one had such a thing as a piano in his 
w T aistcoat pocket. It so chanced that no one had ; and an 
adjournment was accordingly made to the neighbouring 
rooms of one of the masters. Here Edward Bowen himself 
gave the idea of the chorus, and in a very few minutes the 
w r ell-known tune, with its stateliness, its touch of deep 
pathos, its tempestuous close, was composed. The other 
story is this. Some exception was taken to the introduction 
of the Divine Name into the last verse. Mr. Matthew 
Arnold was then at Byron House in Harrow ; the matter 
was referred to him, and he was asked to determine it. He 
at once decided for the line as it stood, and the crowning 
stanza was fortunately saved from serious damage, if not 
from ruin. 

No song came in 1873, but in 1874 Edward Bowen pro- 
duced ' Giants,' which, like so much of his apparently light 
workmanship, expressed strongly held views, while the moral 
incentive of the song may well pass beyond the narrow by- 
path of boy-life, for which it was originally designed, into far 
broader and dustier highways. Have not nations as well 
as schools those fits of depression, those temptations to say 



A MEMOIE 159 

that the living are worse than their forefathers, which find 
expression mutatis mutandis in the first stanzas of this 
School song, where the great ' giants of old ' are represented 
as possessing unheard-of strength and vigour and prowess ? 

There were wonderful giants of old, you know, 
There were wonderful giants of old ; 

They grew more mightily, all of a row, 
Than ever was heard or told ; 

All of them stood their six feet four, 

And they threw to a hundred yards or more, 

And never were lame, or stiff, or sore ; 

And we, compared with the days of yore, 
Are cast in a pigmy mould. 
For all of we, 
Whoever we be, 

Come short of the giants of old, you see. 

And have there not been generations— such as our own 
at the opening of this twentieth century — which have felt 
themselves devoid of the greatness of the past, and have 
in their self-depreciation given way more or less to despon- 
dency, and needed the healthy, invigorating corrective which 
is administered to all laudator es temporis acti in the last 
verse of this merry song for boys ? 

But I think all this is a lie, you know, 

I think all this is a lie ; 
For the hero-race may come and go, 

But it doesn't exactly die ! 
For the match we lose and win it again, 
And a Balliol comes to us now and then, 
And if we are dwarfing in bat and pen, 
Down to the last of the Harrow men, 

We will know the reason why ! 
For all of we, 
Whoever we be, 
Come up to the giants of old, you see. 

The next year, 1875, saw the issue of two songs. One 
of them was a rollicking ditty descriptive of the interview 
between ' Good Queen Bess ' and John Lyon, in the presence 
of ' the bold sea rover,' with regard to the charter of Harrow 



160 EDWABD BOWEN 

School ; the other was a most beautiful piece of work in 
which the ' fairy thoughts ' and the ' fairy voices ' and ' the 
iairy people ' are represented as coming from far and near, 
and circling round the School and its life. It would be im- 
possible to speak too highly of the exquisite daintiness, the 
delicious delicacy, the unbroken beauty of this latter song — 
too dainty, too delicate, too beautiful ever to be estimated 
by ordinary lads at its real worth, but to anyone capable of 
appreciating literary merit conclusive evidence as to the 
writer's remarkable poetic gifts. The last verse, like the last 
verse in ' Forty Years On,' seems to bear its quiet testimony 
to the author's sense that he himself was advancing in years. 
Must the circumstance mean that the ties of sympathy which 
bound him to boy-life would to some extent be relaxed? 
The answer is found in the reflection that the spirit of man 
need not grow old with his body, and that the ears of the 
soul may always remain open to the magic whispers of the 
'fairies.' The whole song, unsurpassed in pure charm and 
gracefulness by anything which came from his pen, will be 
found towards the close of this volume, but the first and last 
verses may also be given here : 

When in the morning cold and bleak, 

In spite of wind and weather, 
The wise and foolish, strong and weak, 

Throng up to School together, 
From off the plain, from round the hill, 

The fairy thoughts arisen 
Begin the day of work and play 

With hope, and whim, and vision : 
Awake the old, suggest the new, 

Heart after heart rejoices — 
Ho ho ! ha ha ! Tra la la la ! — 

So sound the fairy voices. 

O'er twenty leagues of morning dew, 

Across the cheery breezes, 
Can fairies fail to whisper true 

What youth and fancy pleases ? 
As strength decays with after days, 

And eyes have ceased to glisten, 



A MEMOIE 161 

Those souls alone not older grown 

Will have the ears to listen. 
Keep youth a guest of heart and breast, 

And though the hair be whiter, — 
Ho ho ! ha ha ! Tra la la la ! — 

You hear them all the brighter ! 

In 1876 he published a song of another description — a 
great favourite, but much inferior in literary qualities to its 
immediate predecessor. This was ' Jack and Joe.' ' Jack ' 
represents scholarship ; his food often consists of grammars 
and lexicons, and he drives the Oxford examiners in head- 
long rout. ' Joe,' however, is the athlete, whose batting 
turns the hairs of the professional bowlers gray, and who 
' goes with a bat to bed.' The zeal of each is unbounded — 
' Jack's '. for his books, ' Joe's ' for his games : 

Morning wakes with a rousing spell, 

Bees and honey and hive, 
Drones get up at the warning bell, 

But Jack was at work at five. 
Sinks the day on the weary hill, 

Cricketers homeward flow ; 
All climb up in the twilight chill, 

But the last to leave is Joe. 
But Joe is a regular fool, says Jack, 
And Jack is a fool, says Joe. 

The song ends with the suggestion that their apparently 
hopeless quarrel is after all a matter for compromise ; 
grammars and bats, brains and sinews, should go together. 
A happy blend of their qualities will insure for each the 
highest success in after-life — ' Joe ' may become a general, 
and ' Jack ' an ecclesiastical dignitary. 

Next year came two more songs. The first of these 
has for its heroine a certain fair ' Shepherdess,' resident 
' many a year ago ' on the plain at the foot of the hill, with 
whom alike ' the monitor great in Greek,' and ' the cricketing 
captain slim and sleek,' and many another scholar besides 
were desperately in love. But the young lady's determina- 
tion was to have none but the winner of the Gregory 
Scholarship — the most important of the leaving scholarships 

M 



162 EDWAKD BOWEN 

and the blue riband of Harrow — and her hand was duly 
given to that studious and fortunate youth, far, far back in 
the annals of school and country, when ' merry King Charles ' 
was upon the throne, and ready to give to this and all 
other real romance the advantage and pleasure of his pre- 
sence and good wishes. 

And if this ditty of love be true, 

Many a year ago 
(And you'll please forgive our singing it you), 

Down in the plain below ; 
O was there ever so sweet a pair, 
As both of them went a-railking there, 
With a pail and a stool and tangled hair, 

A-milking for to go ? 
But none, she said, 
Will I ever wed, 
But the boy who gets the Gregory prize, 
And crosses his t's and dots his i's, 

Down in the plain below. 

The companion song was directed against the ' sulky 
boys ' who took no adequate interest in the School games. 
A measure of participation in these is very properly compul- 
sory at Harrow, as at most other schools ; but there were 
those who, as far as possible, ' stayed upon the top ' of the 
hill, instead of racing down its slopes with their comrades — 
the greater number — to the cricket or football field ; and it 
is upon these few that the lightly administered blow of the 
song falls : 

Jog, jog, tramp, tramp, down the hill we run, 

When the summer games come with the summer sun ; 

On the grass dreaming a lazy grassy dream, 

List to the merry click, willow tapping seam ; 

Balls ring, throats sing, to a gallant tune, 

Cheerily, cheerily, goes the afternoon. 

Down the hill, down the hill, after dinner drop, 
Sulky boys, sulky boys, stay upon the top ! 



A MEMOIR 163 

The year 1877 brought with it what is to most the 
somewhat unwelcome experience of a contested election in 
connection with public elementary education. The question 
of a School Board at Harrow had for some years past — 
largely at the instigation of the late Mr. Matthew Arnold — 
been forced to the front by Edward Bowen and other local 
Liberals, who had combined to withdraw their subscriptions 
from the Voluntary School, in order to secure one under 
popular management. The tactics had at last been suc- 
cessful, and the first School Board was being formed at 
Harrow. Edward Bowen was one of the candidates. He 
stood as an Anti-clericalist and (to use the modern phraseo- 
logy) a Progressive. His short address sets out perfectly 
clearly his views upon the leading lines of educational 
policy : 

In my opinion the parish is much indebted to the energy and 
goodwill of those gentlemen who have managed the hitherto exist- 
ing schools. But I have much regretted that those gentlemen 
should have wished, from conscientious motives, to deprive the 
parish of the advantage of having its own schools under its own 
control. And I doubt whether those who long resisted, and who now 
deplore the introduction of the new system, are the best persons 
that can be found to carry it out. 

Further, to avoid difficulties which have arisen in many other 
places, I think that clerical influence ought not to be represented 
too strongly on the new School Board. 

I offer myself as a candidate who thinks that the education of 
the people ought to be under the control of the people ; that all 
Churches and sects should be on an equal footing ; that the 
education of their children should be compulsory on all parents ; 
that the scale of fees should be kept low ; that the instruction 
given should be sound and simple, and should not include, in its 
religious portion, any creeds or doctrines to which any section of 
the community might object. 

Such views were not likely to be acceptable to the more 
ecclesiastical or conservative section of the ratepayers, and 
the election was hotly contested. It ended in divided 
honours. Edward Bowen and the Vicar of Harrow were 
both returned ; and once the election was over, there were 
harmony and co-operation. The Board had at the outset of 

M 2 



164 EDWAED BOWEN 

its life to draft its rules, and this task was entrusted to 
Edward Bowen, who took as his model the regulations of 
the London School Board. He did not, however, seek re- 
election at the expiration of the three years' term. Public 
School duties pressed upon him, and the continuance of the 
additional work would have been more than he could have 
managed ; but his place was taken by a colleague, and until 
the present year (1902) there has always been a Harrow 
master upon the local School Board. 

In 1877 too his attention was given to the consideration 
of a somewhat important question in connection with the 
examination of candidates for the Army and the Indian 
Civil Service. It is not stated in the Eeport of the special 
Commission which was appointed to consider the question, 
whether the proposal to add a competition in physical 
exercises directly emanated in the first instance from him 
or not; but the fact would appear to be definitely esta- 
blished by the following letter, which was published in due 
course by the Commission, together with several others from 
leading educationists. 1 

Harrow : March 30, 1877. 
My Lord and Gentlemen, — 1. I request leave to bring before 
your notice a suggestion with reference to the examinations for the 
Army and the Civil Service of India, which appears to me to have 
some importance and to be of a practical character. What I 
propose is that there should be added to the present examination a 
physical competition, in which the marks gained should be added 
to those otherwise obtained by the candidates. 

2. I should, perhaps, say, that I have had considerable experi- 
ence of the working of the present examinations, being the master 
in principal charge of the Modern Side at Harrow School ; and 
that, from circumstances into which I need not enter, I have a 
somewhat varied acquaintance not only with the practice of 
physical exercises generally, but also with the capacity of boys 
and young men to take part in them. 

3. I cannot but think that an addition of marks for physical 
excellence would be in itself useful and desirable ; that it is merely 
just that bodily gifts of strength and health should tell in the 

1 This and the following letters are reprinted from the Eeport of the Com- 
mission by leave of the Controller of H.M. Stationery Office. 



A MEMOIE 165 

selection of an officer or an Indian administrator in some propor- 
tion to, though no doubt in a less degree than, those results of 
intelligence and study which are denoted by intellectual success ; 
and that the addition would go far towards increasing the general 
popularity of the system of competitive examinations. If carried 
out with moderation, it would not impair the success of any of the 
candidates most remarkable for intellectual merit, but only alter 
the places of the lower candidates, who, as a general rule, approach 
very nearly to one another in marks, and who might reasonably 
be discriminated from one another by a verdict on their physical 
accomplishments. 

4. Permit me, however, to refer to one or two of the dangers 
which it would seem most important to avoid in the intro- 
duction of such a change as I have suggested. In the first 
place, it would be desirable to avoid any specially professional 
element in the qualifications demanded. This would be merely 
following the example of the examination as conducted hitherto. 
Just as a lad is not asked now to show himself skilled in fortifica- 
tion, military engineering, or the Indian languages, but only to 
give evidence of his being so qualified as to be able to approach 
these studies with the probability of greater success than his rivals, 
so I would have him show proficiency not in riding, shooting, or 
the endurance of camp life, but in those physical excellencies 
which are natural and customary among all boys and youths, and 
which give promise of future healthy development. 

5. Again, it would be right to exclude mere skill as an element 
of success, since accident and circumstances have so large a share 
in its production ; and to avoid exercises which would give a 
marked advantage to candidates possessed of wealth and leisure, 
and accustomed to a country life, over those in humbler circum- 
stances ; and to render the competition at once simple and really 
open to all. 

6. Once more, the success of the scheme might be impaired by 
its involving a great expenditure of time. I venture to submit 
that in the detailed suggestions which I am about to make, this 
danger will be minimised, if not avoided. 

7. If, however, it should be urged, that all that is necessary is 
provided at present by the medical examination of the candidate, 
I would respectfully reply, in the first place, that this tends to 
secure only a minimum of health and strength without giving any 
advantage to the healthiest and strongest ; and secondly, that in 
this, as in all examinations, a mere standard tends inevitably to 
lower itself, and that at present the qualifications demanded are 



166 EDWAED BOWEN 

in some cases very low. Indeed, I question whether the success- 
ful candidates for some of the examinations of which I am 
speaking are, in point of physical qualification, any further in 
advance of the average of hoys and young men than would 
naturally follow from the fact that a military, or an Indian, career 
suggests itself most naturally to the vigorous rather than to the 
weak ; and, as far as my experience goes, this difference shows 
itself but slightly. 

8. I would propose, then, that — 

a. Candidates should be allowed to offer themselves for a 

voluntary physical examination. 

(Voluntary, because the essence of the examination 
would be to give additional advantage to those who 
excel in physical merit, not to graduate all the candi- 
dates who are of an average, or below the average, 
standard.) 

b. The marks gained should be added to those otherwise 

obtained. 

(In other words, this competition should not 
exclude any other subject ; it would hold a position 
like that which freehand drawing now has in most 
of the examinations.) 

c. The object should be to give an advantage to the strongest, 

most active, most healthy candidates, not to those 
specially accomplished in exercises suited to the Array 
or to Indian life. 

d. The number of marks allotted should be such as to leave to 

intellectual merit a very clear predominance. 
c. The details of the marking should not be published. 

(This would be necessary to prevent the vulgarising 
of the competition, and to avoid personal rivalry.) 
/, Marks should be given up to the maximum assigned, on 
the understanding that mediocrity is represented by 0. 
(This is in order to preclude the entrance to the 
competition of any but those superior in physical 
merit. The saving of time would be an important 
result of this ; and the principle is, I venture to think, 
the right one to adopt.) 
g. Only those should be examined who have passed the pre- 
liminary examination. 

(Also for the saving of time.) 
h. The maximum should be practically obtainable by the most 
strong, healthy, and active youths, and its marks should 



A MEMOIE 167 

be placed at about the same number as those allotted to 
freehand drawing (1,000 in the Army Examination). 
i. The examiners should be directed to take into consideration 
the height, appearance, carriage, muscular development, 
visible health, measure of chest &c. of the candidates, 
and any other evidences of strength and activity which 
may be easily recognised. 

9. Such, my Lord and Gentlemen, are the conditions which 
I would submit for the examination which I propose, and it would 
be perhaps well to be content with these at the outset. But 
I cannot deny that the competition would be more satisfactory, 
and the strain on the discretion of the examiners less, if they 
were empowered, as they found themselves able, to introduce 
some specific exercises into their examination, which might be held 
in the neighbourhood of a gymnasium and a swimming-bath. 
There can be no doubt that a really more perfect result would be 
obtained, if some such development as the following were added to 
the examination. It will be remarked that it is drawn in strict 
adherence to the principles suggested above in paragraph 4. 

10. The 1,000 marks awarded to physical merit should be 
divided into two moieties, 500 being given at the general discretion 
of the examiners, as above recommended, and 500 in the following 
proportion : 

i. 200 marks for speed. A time race of 300 yards. Medio- 
crity, i.e. marks, being represented by a time of 36 
seconds, 
ii. 100 marks for swimming 100 yards, 50 marks being given 

for ordinary, and 100 for good, swimming, 
iii. 100 marks for high jumping ; mediocrity represented by 

4 ft. 6 in. 
iv. 100 marks for carrying shot. 

It is obvious that the scheme just suggested would need 
revision, after some experience had been gained of its working ; 
but I am much mistaken if it would not be found to afford a fairly 
satisfactory basis for the first occasion of a valuation of candidates. 
I have only, my Lord and Gentlemen, to apologise for having 
taken up so much space in the suggestions which I have ventured 
to lay before you, and to recommend them to your favourable con- 
sideration. I have &c. 

(Signed) E. E. Bowbn, 

Late Fellow of Trinity College, Camfa-idge, 
and Master of the Modem Side, Harrow School. 
The Chairman and Members of the Civil Service Commission. 



168 EDWAED BOWEN 

Some months after, he sent to one of the members of 
the Commission a letter on a point with regard to which 
difficulties had been suggested. He writes : 

Harrow : February 9, 1878. 

I am much struck by your saying that hesitation is felt as 
regards a general assignment of marks for apparent health and 
strength. I cannot share that feeling myself. Having for many 
years seen here a constant succession of boys engaged in school- 
work at one moment, and in athletic exercises at another, I have 
no doubt whatever as to the ease with which the strong and 
healthy could be discriminated in a few minutes from the rest. 
I have had before me to-day a class of 20 boys of about the age of 
Woolwich or Sandhurst candidates, some of whom in fact will 
shortly present themselves to you for examination ; and since 
beginning to write this I have written down for each of them an 
assigned mark, varying from to 500, with a very complete 
certainty that I am not far wrong. A doctor could do this still 
better. A fair result may be attained with the help of a stetho- 
scope, a tape, and a mere glance at the figure and complexion ; 
and there could be no objection to allowing an examiner to use 
what additional means he liked, provided that the desired object 
were made clear to him, and that he reported from time to time 
on his methods. From what I know of the candidates who enter, 
I do not think that there would be among them the smallest 
reluctance to offer themselves for such an examination. It would 
be of the same kind as that which is now enforced on all candi- 
dates for the Army, though it would, no doubt, be more careful 
and severe. 

Permit me to press this view by another consideration. I 
think that such an assignment of marks would be absolutely 
necessary in order to correct the results of any further tests. 
There is, after all, something accidental in (say) the ability to 
jump well ; and I should shrink from giving one-third (perhaps) 
of the total physical marks to a candidate who might possibly, 
however nimble, have a weak circulation, a tendency to varicose 
veins, or a laboured breathing. Once abandon general physical 
competition, and a lad with any of these defects (if passed by the 
present medical examiners, who are not very strict) might con- 
ceivably gain the highest marks assigned for physical excellence. 

Passing on to the suggested special competitions, I will say 
that I shall be very glad if the time comes when all of them can 



A MEMOIE 169 

be easily and profitably used for examination. But I hope I may 
be forgiven if I venture to urge caution at the outset. It may 
happen, and it not improbably will, until the examiners have 
clearly proved their sternness in rejecting mediocrity, that almost 
all the candidates who have passed the preliminary examination 
will enter for one or more competitions. With the possible ex- 
ception of riding, I think that all the exercises which you mention 
may be managed either at once or ultimately ; but the practical 
difficulties will, for the first year or two, be very great. Though I 
have had some experience in organising such things, I invariably 
am surprised at the time which is taken in managing them. 
Eunning is soon over, and swimming need not take long ; but 
jumping must involve delay, and riding still more. If 200 or 300 
men enter for each of these, and the times have to be arranged 
for each so as not to clash with their paper-work, it is hard to see 
how the difficulties of the organisation can be surmounted. 

But they are difficulties which will gradually diminish ; and if 
a modest and humble beginning were made, would it not be 
possible gradually to add fresh tests to the previous ones ? 
Indeed, it is not clear that fresh notice would be required for 
them, or even (unless there were choice of exercises) for the details 
of the first proposed competition. 

May I remind you, too, that the proposal will be very new to 
the public, and popular though it will probably be in the main, it 
may be desirable to avoid any appearance which might be thought 
too theatrical or too striking to the imagination ? 

On the whole, with deference to yourself and those gentlemen 
who have entered on the subject, I would suggest that the special 
part of the competition should in the first instance be limited to 
running and carrying shot, and perhaps swimming. 

I will add one or two remarks on matters of detail. 

1. The total maximum of marks suggested is 1,200. May I 
remind you that the average total of marks gained is only about 
4,000, and that the addition proposed will be greater than it seems, 
because a deduction is made from almost all the other subjects, 
and none will be made from this ? 

2. I would suggest that not only the examination itself, but 
the details of its results, should be kept private. The physical 
aggregate must be published, but the items of which it is com- 
posed might be kept back as easily as the marks given for each 
separate question of a paper. Do what the authorities will, there 
will be a danger of vulgarising the competition, and privacy will 
be one means of avoiding this. 



170 EDWAED BOWEN 

3. If running be one of the tests, it must be against time. I 
submit that about 300 [400] yards is the best distance ; anything 
much less is hard fco judge, while a long race is open to some 
objection in regard of the necessary training, as well as the length 
of the performance. 

4. It will be remembered that riding is taught at Sandhurst 
to all future officers. If it be adopted for competition, it will 
be necessary, I suppose, to borrow one of the Military Eiding 
Schools ; but I cannot conceive that any performances in these 
can give a very valuable criterion of really good riding. 

5. Putting the shot always brings out very strong men. But 
it is after all an exceptional gift, and many of the strongest men 
cannot succeed at it : ought it to rank as high as other tests ? On 
the other hand, carrying shot is, I cannot doubt, the very best 
test for mere muscular strength that exists. 

6. I am glad that you mention no gymnastic exercises. To 
offer marks to them would be a premium not on physical ex- 
cellence but on very special preparation. 

7. If I were asked to fix a scale of marks myself, I would 
assign 1,000 to the whole, giving 500 to general physical merit, 
and the rest to special tests, of which running should have the 
largest share. 

I have only to add that I shall be happy to come up to London 
at any time if it should be thought that I can be of any use 
towards the further consideration of the subject. 

Believe me, &c. 

The Commission in their report unhesitatingly adopted 
the general idea of an examination in physical exercises. 
They did not, however, regard the proposal that marks 
should be given for the general health and strength 
of a candidate as free from objection ; on the ground 
that such an estimate, even when formed by medical 
officers of experience, must be attended by an element of 
uncertainty, which it was desirable to exclude. They 
therefore ' recommended that competitions should be held 
under the following six heads : (1) riding, (2) walking, 
(3) running, (4) leaping, (5) swimming, and (6) gymnastics.' 
These competitions, however, were to be voluntary, and no 
candidate was to be allowed to enter under more than 
three heads. To a member of the Commission and to Edward 



A MEMOIE 171 

Bowen was assigned jointly the drawing up of a detailed 
memorandum with regard to a system of marks, and the 
memorandum was added by the Commission to their report. 
It is not, however, necessary to enter into its details. 

In the winter of 1879 the Headmasters' Conference met 
at Eton, and Edward Bowen sent them, in response to a 
request which had been conveyed to him by Dr. Butler, 
a paper on 'The Study of Modern Languages at Public 
Schools.' It is distinctly the least interesting and least 
successful of his educational essays ; it has not the same 
literary brilliancy as most of his other work, nor does it 
elucidate great principles or dwell upon cardinal theories, as, 
for example, his paper on ' Teaching by means of Grammar.' 
The subject, perhaps, scarcely lent itself to any idealist 
treatment, and Edward Bowen at the outset of his paper 
speaks of it as ' a document which is not intended for wide 
circulation.' Under these circumstances the essay has not 
been included among the Appendices, though a brief account 
of it here will not be out of place. 

The writer first asks what is meant by success in teach- 
ing ? Does the successful teacher chiefly impart know- 
ledge, or chiefly develop the mind ? Perhaps in view of the 
different answers which such a question receives from wise 
men, we may say that neither view is true to the exclusion 
of the other. But, on the whole, Edward Bowen strongly 
inclines to the opinion that success in teaching is mainly to 
be judged, so far as it can be judged at all, by the extent to 
which knowledge has been imparted. If this has been well 
done, it cannot but follow that the mind has also been 
developed, while the opposite view is open to the practical 
objections that 'we shall never agree on what is the best 
mental training,' and that 'the plea that the storage has 
been scientifically executed covers clumsiness and conceals 
failure.' As regards the success, thus estimated, to be 
expected from teaching modern languages, it is — the author 
of the paper thinks — greater than that which may be 
looked for in connection with Classics, 

which in this respect are on the whole a failure : few boys end by 
reading a Latin author at sight, and still fewer a Greek one. Now 



172 EDWAED BOWEN 

French and German are up to a certain point easier. To write 
good French prose, indeed, seems to me as hard as to write good 
Latin : but in modern languages a sentence is more easily under- 
stood ; the difficulties of order are less ; the French accidence is 
simpler than either of the classical ones, and the German easier 
still. Take the verbs. The verbs in /u may have the moral effect 
of the ancient Greek tragedies ; they may purify the mind by 
means of pity and terror ; but they do not get learnt. But verbs 
in French and German, if eight lessons will not do it, are mastered 
at the ninth. It may fairly be hoped that, with an equal time 
devoted to the study, the Classical standard will be largely surpassed, 
and an equal result obtained with a less expenditure of time. The 
last clause which I have written is not intended to be ironical, for 
with modern languages, at any rate, small results are much better 
than none ; the study can and generally will be continued after- 
wards, and even a smattering has its uses. How far this con- 
sideration applies also to Latin, and how far to Greek, and how 
far it justifies apparent failure, is not our immediate question. 

What — so far as modern languages go — is a reasonable 
standard at which to aim ? As regards French, an average 
boy, who commences at a preparatory school, and works on 
at it in a public school till the age of eighteen, having three 
lessons a week with some preparation required for each, 
might fairly be expected to be able at the end to translate 
correctly and to write easy compositions without blunders, and 
' a boy who begins early, works regularly, and gives four or 
five hours a week will probably know the language well for 
literary purposes, when he leaves school ; he will read it quite 
easily, and will write a letter correctly.' As regards conver- 
sational capacity it must sadly be confessed that no real 
measure of success is to be looked for. The essayist points 
out that conversation cannot be taught to boys in form. ' Con- 
versation requires more than one person; each converser 
must speak aloud ; all cannot with advantage do so to- 
gether. While A is speaking, B is unemployed, or badly 
employed in listening to his bad attempts.' Nor is it 
desirable, as is sometimes suggested, that the master should 
himself habitually talk French or German. Very few 
masters, to begin with, have enough knowledge to enable 
them to do so ; only ' very little is wanted to make a school- 



A MEMOIE 173 

lesson bad,' and any failure on the part of the master to 
translate his lesson with the utmost readiness would more 
than supply that ' very little.' And in any case : 

the foreign expressions would generally not serve our turn. We 
want the boy to apprehend quickly ; the sentiments must now be 
delivered slowly, or he will not catch them. We want all his 
faculties to be on the strain to follow our teaching ; half of them 
will now be spent in translating our language. The teacher can 
certainly fall back on conversation classes and casual talk ; but I 
do not think that these can ever be sufficient in quantity to supply 
the practice necessary for conversational ease. 

The objection is only half got over by supposing the lesson 
to be given by a foreigner, while there is in his case 
the disadvantage that he will probably know English 
imperfectly. 

On the whole, then, I am inclined to be sanguine with regard 
to the possibility of teaching French or German as a literary attain- 
ment to boys who have (say) one-sixth or one-seventh of their time 
to give to it, and I expect that we shall succeed in this more and 
more. Conversationally, I cannot expect much success in large 
schools. But conversation would not be long in coming, with 
opportunities of practice, to any well-grounded student. We are 
proud to think that we ourselves could talk with Professor Blackie 
in a month's time, if we only had the practice ; and Latin is 
distinctly easier after half an hour. Probably a well-trained boy 
reads French as easily as we read Latin, and can find his oppor- 
tunities more easily. 

The essay afterwards goes on to touch upon several inci- 
dental points — the greater ease with which older boys learn 
a language than younger ones ; ' the uselessness of formal 
grammar as a means of teaching ' (a return to his old 
theme) ; the ' golden ' value of combining French with some 
other study, such as history ; the use by well-advanced 
scholars of French books as alternatives to English ones ; 
the use of French translations of the classics ; the difficul- 
ties in organisation caused by Swiss bonnes and German 
governesses ; the ' unique ' value of French for educational 
study, because of the ' clear, orderly, and perfectly traceable ' 



174 EDWARD BOWEN 

character of its historical development ; the ' uphill work ' 
of pronunciation ; the use of modern literature ; and with 
the following passage in connection with the last point the 
paper closes abruptly : 

Practically the curious phenomenon presents itself that at 
most schools nothing is read of more than a hundred years old in 
German, or of less in French. It is always Schiller and Goethe, 
Moliere and Eaeine. Fortunately Schiller is as good reading as 
one would wish, but there ought to be more editions of Goethe's 
prose, and if possible some of Heine. The last few years, how- 
ever, have opened a good many fresh stores. I wish Boileau were 
more commonly read, as he is now fairly accessible ; Pope did 
not surpass Ms rhythm, and hardly equalled his wit. Voltaire's 
' Henriade ' has parrs as interesting as Eaeine, which is not ex- 
orbitant praise ; but they are not to be had in England. There 
are happily collections of modern plays now published in both 
languages which seem well chosen. Of Thiers I have already 
spoken. If some essays of Sainte-Beuve existed in a form adapted 
for school use, the) - would be excellent for our pupils to compare 
with their Macaulay. I have known boys read Pascal, but it would 
hardly do for a school book. There are plenty of editions of the 
classical dramatists of France, and an anthology of archaic French 
is on the point of being published by Hachette. Montesquieu 
does not need special editions, and can be bought cheap ; but 
probably he will not be much read. It would be an excellent 
service if some one were to publish some portions or even the 
whole of some of the best chroniclers — say Joinville or, still better, 
Villehardouin — in the original text and an inexpensive form ; 
there is a St. Louis to be had now, but it is modernised. Parts of 
Guizot are to be had easily, and Merimee, and Villemain, as well 
as the immortal Erckmann-Chatrian series. But prose fiction is 
generally not so good for class reading as books of travels or 
history. 



The Easter holidays of 1S80 brought Edward Bowen 
into the closest contact with contemporary political con- 
troversies. There had been for some time an element of 
restlessness in his mind, and a feeling that, if the opportunity 
came, he would exchange the work of a schoolmaster for a 



A MEMOIB 175 

career in Parliament ; but such an opportunity had never 
definitely offered itself. He had indeed felt after one or 
two constituencies ; but matters had never got beyond an 
early stage, and he had never fought a decisive contest. 
In the spring of 1880 this experience was to be his. He 
was chosen to contest the borough of Hertford in the 
Liberal interest against Mr. Arthur Balfour. It was the 
election which turned out Lord Beaconsfield, and pro- 
nounced condemnation by an overwhelming majority upon 
his former policy, especially in South Africa and Afghanistan. 
With this condemnation Edward Bowen fully concurred. 
His hatred of militarism has already been noticed, and it 
came out strongly enough on this occasion both in his 
address and in his speeches. ' I am,' he said in the former, 
' an opponent of the policy which has involved this country 
in embarrassing foreign relations, in two unjust wars, and 
in eight millions of debt.' In one of his speeches — appa- 
rently his first in the actual campaign — he spoke with great 
warmth, and with uncompromising severity, of the Indian 
policy of the Conservative Government : 

We are sometimes accused of using strong language ; but, with 
regard to the Afghan war, I do not think, notwithstanding all that 
has been said about it, that the country is even yet alive to its 
utter shamelessness. We had on the north-east frontier of India 
a quiet people, doing us no harm — on the whole friendly to us — 
living in their mountains in the same sort of way and with the same 
degree of independence as the Scottish people lived a hundred and 
fifty years ago in their mountains, with the same feeling of devotion 
to their country, and with the same hatred to foreigners. We 
had then in those mountains a powerful protection against any 
stranger who chose to invade us from beyond. Of course I do 
not speak from my own knowledge alone, although I have studied 
more than most people the principles of military science ; but I say 
we had then a perfect frontier on the north-east of India. I can- 
not conceive anything better than a broad river, a desert plain, 
and an almost inaccessible mountain chain ; and if ever an army 
of one hundred thousand Eussians had come across the Khyber 
Pass and debouched there, the only question for them a month 
afterwards would have been at what particular place they 
should capitulate. An invasion of India from Afghanistan is an 



176 EDWARD BOWEN 

utter impossibility, and if we hold India for a thousand years we 
need have no fear of a Eussian invasion from that quarter. But 
from folly, from intrigue, or from want of something to do, the 
Government have interfered, and we have now hills across which 
the name of England is written in blood ; we have passes, and 
rivers, and homesteads, all of which have been trampled down by 
our army. ' The necessary consequences of war,' perhaps you will 
say. But who made the war ? At all events, not we citizens of 
England. I speak with warmth upon this subject, because I am 
convinced that the people of this country are not yet alive to the 
folly and wickedness of this war ; and if there were nothing else 
which made it necessary to have a contest, and to fight the battles 
of the Liberal policy, I should say this Afghan war was quite 
enough. 

In a speech delivered as the political campaign drew to 
its close he spoke not less strongly upon the watchword — 
' Defence, not Defiance ' — the motto alike of the Liberals 
and of the Volunteers : 

1 Defence ' is then simple enough. But what is ' Defiance ' ? 
I call it ' Defiance ' when at a Mansion-house dinner a Prime 
Minister x goes out of his way pompously to declare that England 
can stand not one campaign only, but two campaigns, and three 
campaigns, and that at the very moment when he had in his 
pocket — but suppressed it — a friendly letter from the Emperor of 
Eussia. I call it ' Defiance ' when patriotic songs are sung at 
music-halls simply to stir up a warlike feeling, and for no other 
purpose. I call it ' Defiance ' when Lord Beaconsfield speaks to 
our Irish fellow-citizens not in the terms of ordinary argument 
and reason, but in the terms of insult and outrage. ' Defiance ' is 
easy enough. Any Minister in power can put together those 
blustering words ; but if prestige, and ascendancy, and all that, 
merely mean that we are to make ourselves as unpleasant to the 
nations of Europe as we can, you might as well, if that is all they 
mean, attribute prestige and ascendancy to the Colorado beetle. 

In matters of domestic policy Edward Bowen kept in 
the main to the party programme. The development of 
National Education, the County Franchise, the reform of 
the Game Laws so far as regards ground game, ' equal 
rights of burial in the national graveyards ' for Noncon- 

1 The reference, of course, is to Lord Beaconsfield, 



A MEMOIE 177 

formists and Churchmen, the improvement of the local 
government of counties, the amendment of the law regu- 
lating the distribution and transfer of land — all these were 
reforms to which he alluded in his address, and for which he 
was prepared to vote. On the other hand, he declined to 
support Local Option. 'Though sincerely eager for the 
cause of Temperance, I am not able to support the Per- 
missive Bill, which seems to me an unwise and misleading 
method of dealing with the evils of drunkenness.' He says 
nothing of Disestablishment — a policy which had, it may be 
observed, his approval in theory, although he was of opinion 
that the time was not yet ripe for it, and that it was a mis- 
take to force it prematurely to the front. A question put to 
him at a meeting brought out a declaration against Home 
Eule, and another a statement in favour of the local settle- 
ment of the religious question in Board Schools. ' For his 
part, he was in favour of the reading of the Bible in schools ; 
and it was unanimously voted by the School Board of which 
he was a member ; but he considered that it ought not to be 
imposed upon those who were reluctant to receive it.' 

The closing words of his last speech before the poll may 
also well be quoted. They show that to him Liberalism was 
something much more than a temporary creed upon certain 
definite points, that it was a great tendency, a great stream 
of resolve and effort, which was independent of the passing 
opinions, and even the passing mistakes, of the day or hour. 
To Edward Bowen, both before and after 1886, the Liberal 
party was the greatest of all the national forces making for 
righteousness, and the belief in it as such a power underlies 
these last vigorous and inspiring words at Hertford : 

I am addressing you now, gentlemen, perhaps for the last time 
as your candidate ; I will not say how it may be as your member. 
But as I withdraw, and leave the rest of the work to you, I feel 
reluctant to leave you without some words of hope. There rises 
at such moments before one's eyes the picture of what England 
might be, with equal laws, with class privileges abolished, with 
perfected education, with peace secured, with pauperism dimi- 
nished, with Church quarrels set at rest. Some men here and 
there tell me that they do not read the papers and do not think of 

N 



178 EDWAED BOWEN 

politics. Are there really any who do not care for such things as 
these and have no hope for a better future? Depend upon it, 
those who have the largest sympathies are likely to do the 
best work. 

1 Never a sigh of passion or of pity, 
Never a wail for weakness or for wrong,' 

fails, says the poet, to find an echo in regions beyond the human 
vision. And not only in those distant realms, but here, too, 
generation after generation, is heard the cry of enslaved nations 
and degraded classes, of ill-taught children and neglected homes, 
of wives whose husbands are drunkards, of poachers entrapped and 
decoyed into crime, of — shall I say it ? — of voters who may not 
vote free ; and with it, too, there comes the cheering shout of men 
who can help them, and who will. What then ? Are all Liberals 
good men and all Conservatives bad ? No ; there are good and 
bad on both sides. But I contend that in our ranks there is, and 
has been, a more earnest spirit for dealing with such problems as 
these — a spirit which will prefer them to phantoms of delusive 
honour — and that is what I mean by being a Liberal. Gentlemen, 
vote for me or not, as you like ; but, in Heaven's name, let each of 
your lives be one long vote in favour of freedom and progress. 
Then you will pass away, as we all shall, and the place will forget 
your name, but your work will live — live in the happier homes, 
live in the developed intelligence, live in the freer life of the 
children whom you have helped to bless. 

The borough, however, was too traditionally Conservative 
for the attack upon its political flag to have any chance of 
success, and Mr. Balfour was returned by 564 votes to 400. 
This was the first and last occasion upon which Edward 
Bowen fought a contested election, but it was not the last 
in which he came forward as a candidate. In 1883 he 
nearly stood, it is believed, for Leeds. In 1884 he was 
selected with the late Mr. C. A. Fyffe to contest the borough 
of Oxford in the Liberal interest, but he did not persevere 
with his candidature. In 1885 he was before the committee 
of selection in connection with the Harrow division of 
Middlesex, but Mr. Milner (now Lord Milner) was chosen 
by the Liberals to contest the constituency. The latter 
made a good but unsuccessful fight, and Edward Bowen 
lost nothing by the fact that he had not been accepted as his 



A MEMOIE 179 

party's champion beyond a certain amount of trouble and 
expense. In 1886 came the Home Rule Bill, and from 
that moment there was a cleavage between him and what 
had formerly been his party. From that date he was a 
' Liberal Unionist,' though he never, as has now been the 
case with the great majority of that political section, allied 
himself with the Conservatives. He remained to the. end 
strongly anti-Tory; all his old Liberal sympathies and 
aspirations continued, not one of them was diminished or 
foregone. He was still, as before, a Eadical and a Democrat, 
opposed to the military spirit, feeling deeply for and with 
the working classes, in strong sympathy with the trades 
unions, hating clericalism, urgent for social reform. In 
our recent troubles in South Africa he was opposed to 
the policy of the Government, and believed the Boer war 
to be both unnecessary and unjust. At the same time he 
recognised that, once hostilities had gone to any length, 
any restitution of the constitutional position of the two 
republics was out of the question ; and he was prepared to 
accept a generous measure of self-government as the best 
solution possible of the political and racial difficulties, 
brought (in his opinion) to their acutest stage through the 
fault of the English Ministry. He disliked the recent in- 
crease in the numbers of the Army, and almost his last 
private intervention in political matters was an endeavour 
to persuade the Opposition to divide (' as an Opposition ') 
against the proposals of the Secretary of State for War 
to augment the military forces, even though the division 
should involve them in a complete, and even disastrous, 
defeat. But he also strongly felt the need of Army Beform 
— a smaller Army and a better one was his theory. He 
never carried, however, his views upon the diminution of the 
fighting material, so far as actual quantity was concerned, 
into the question of the Navy. The size of the Navy must 
be such that its supremacy was indisputable. To recall a 
passage in one of his Hertford speeches — a passage just 
quoted — the policy of this country must be ' Defence,' not 
• Defiance.' A great Navy was essential for ' Defence,' but 

N 2 



180 EDWAED BOWEN 

a large Army — with an ambitious or vainglorious spirit 
pervading its ranks — might easily mean ' Defiance.' 

It is somewhat difficult to estimate the measure of 
success which Edward Bowen would have attained as a 
member of the House of Commons. The actual circum- 
stances of political life would have kept him from office. 
He would have been no party to a Home Eule policy ; he 
would not have adopted towards a Conservative Govern- 
ment — or a Government mainly Conservative — any other 
attitude than one of hostility. He would, therefore, since 
1886, have had to stand aloof to some extent from the 
ordinary party organisations. He fully realised this — and 
the knowledge of it certainly mitigated any sense of dis- 
appointment which his failure to enter the parliamentary 
arena may have caused him. But would he have been an 
independent power in the House? To some extent, un- 
doubtedly. A man of strong character, of exceptional 
ability, of singularly beautiful and refined mind, and of 
intense earnestness, can scarcely fail to make a deep mark 
in the Commons — even if those characteristics are not 
accompanied (as in his case) by any great oratorical capacity. 
But Edward Bowen, though he would have attracted and 
influenced the finer minds, whether inside or outside the 
House, was not suited to lead masses of men. He would 
have understood them, but they would not have under- 
stood him; and the same would have applied, though to 
a less degree, as between him and the rank and file of 
a parliamentary party. There would always have been a 
somewhat indefinable element of separation — or definable 
only as the same element which separates a man of pecu- 
liarly delicate morale and sensitive mind from those capable 
of taking their part in the rough and tumble experiences 
of ordinary life. Had Edward Bowen succeeded in his 
attempt to enter Parliament, the gain to political life would 
have been wholly incommensurate with the loss to educa- 
tion; and there is probably not one of his friends or col- 
leagues or pupils who will not feel that it was far, far better 
for the extent and durability of his reputation, for the 
value and completeness of his career, for the fullness of the 



A MEMOIR 181 

ministry with which he ' served his generation,' that the 
election at Hertford was lost by him and not won. 



The years 1878 to 1880 brought yet more songs. The 
first of these was a noble composition, noble in its con- 
ception, and noble as pure literature. His theme is the 
birth of Harrow — a birth contemporaneous with more than 
one of the greatest names in English history, whose ' glory ' 
is for ever ' encircled ' about the School : 

When Raleigh rose to fight the foes, 

We sprang to work and will ; 
When Glory gave to Drake the wave, 

She gave to us the Hill. 
The ages drift in rolling tide, 

But high shall float the morn 
Adown the stream of England's pride, 
When Drake and we were born ! 
For we began when he began, 

Our times are one ; 
His glory thus shall circle us 
Till time be done. 

Then comes a reference to the ' Avon's child,' reared by the 
same winds that were the nurses of Harrow, and when 
Shakespeare's genius woke the world, Harrow also thrilled 
as it 'heard the music soft and wild.' The last verse may, 
perhaps, rank as the finest eight lines which ever came from 
Edward Bowen's pen : 

Guard, guard it well, where Sidney fell, 

The poet-soldier's grave ; 
Thy life shall roll, royal soul, 

In other hearts as brave. 
While Thought to wisdom wins the gay, 

While Strength upholds the free, 
Are we the sons of yesterday 

Or heirs of thine and thee ? 

The next song was an eulogium on the generally and 
heartily abused month of October. The months meet to 



182 EDWAED BOWEN 

choose a king, and the selection is referred to ' the lads and 
the lasses.' The pale-faced students choose March, since 
it is that month which brings the scholarships; the girls 
choose the soft and delicious May ; but the lads will have 
none but October. 

October brings the cold weather down, 

When the wind and the rain continue ; 
He nerves the limbs that are lazy grown, 

And braces the languid sinew ; 
So while we have voices and lungs to cheer, 

And the winter frost before us, 
Come sing to the king of the mortal year, 
And thunder him out in chorus ! 
October ! October ! 
March to the dull and sober ! 
The suns of May for the schoolgirls' play, 
But give to the boys October ! 

In 1879 came two songs. One of them was a quaint, 
humorous ditty on ' Euclid,' and on ' the little black demon ' 
to whom all the miseries of the youthful student of 
' Euclid ' are due. The only way to deal with the hob- 
goblin is to tackle him and ' teach him respect for his 
betters,' and to this end he must be caught and well 
shaken and thumped. The other song was a dainty, delicate 
little ode — ' June and the Scholar ' — set by Mr. Farmer as a 
graceful quartette, the only setting possible in view of its 
fragile character. The scholar, rejoicing in the beauty of 
summer, fears to lose the companionship of all the glow 
and grace which come with the month of June : 

June, be a sister, and stay among the trees ! 

But he is reassured, and bidden remember that the happi- 
ness of summer was designed for him, and should be accepted 
and enjoyed : 

Never fear, 
Scholar dear, 
In the morning of the year, 
Was not all the sunny beauty made for you, made for you ? 



A MBMOIE 183 

Take the bright shiny day, 
Take the pleasure and the play, 
The shade and the twilight, the dawning and the dew. 

But the misgiving continues. The glory of the summer 
sky will depart, and with it all the charm of meadow and 
glade will go also. The voice, however, of reassurance 
becomes stronger. The winter will follow the summer, but 
the summer will return again, and at the last there shall be 
summer which shall cease only with time itself : 

When the rose 
Full blows, 
When the surly winter goes, 
I will come with the swallows and the sun, and the sun ; 
And the grass shall be bright 
In the glad June light ; 
Far and away, till the world is dead and gone. 

The next year too (1880) gave birth to some beautiful 
lines — ' Good Night ' — which may perhaps be spoken of as 
the slumber song of the Harrow boy. It may be doubted 
whether ' Hampstead Lights ' were ever before made the 
subject of real poetry, but it is they, seen from one side of 
the hill, which are here introduced into verses of great 
charm : 

Good night ! Ten o'clock is nearing ; 

Lights from Hampstead, many, fewer, more, 
Fainter, fuller, vanishing, appearing, 
Flash and float a friendly greeting o'er. 

It is these friendly lights which sympathise with the tasks 
and troubles of boyhood : 

Good night ! How they dart anigh thee 
Bright glad rays for repetition known ; 
If the task be crabbed and defy thee, 
How they blink a sympathetic groan ! 
Wit acuter — 

Guesses free and fast — 
Tyrant tutor 
Placable at last — 
Such the blessings sparkle to the sight ; 
Take them and answer, Good night ! 



184 EDWAED BOWEN 

So too it is these • Hampstead lights ' which make their own 
the natural aspirations of boyhood for merriment and vigour 
and success in games. 

Luck befriend thee 

From the very toss ; 
See, they send thee 
Victory across ; 
Speed the ball, and animate the fight ; 
So, till the morning, Good night ! 

Once again, these distant lights are the true friends and 
well-wishers of youth, and flash their prayers and blessings 
upon young life, frail and weak and tempted. 

Good night ! Sleep, and so may ever 
Lights half seen across a murky lea, 
Child of hope, and courage, and endeavour 
Gleam a voiceless benison on thee ! 
Youth be bearer 

Soon of hardihood ; 
Life be fairer, 
Loyaller to good ; 
Till the far lamps vanish into light, 
Best in the dream-time. Good night ! 



In 1882 this period of Edward Bowen's life-work was 
brought to its close, and the third and last period com- 
menced. ' The Grove,' a large school-house standing right 
on the top of the hill, close to the parish church, was vacant, 
and Edward Bowen was asked by Dr. Butler to take charge 
of it. There was perhaps before this, and certainly after- 
wards, a belief among the boys that he had set his heart 
on this particular house, and had refused others in order 
that in the course of time he might succeed to it. Never 
was boyish tradition wider of the mark. The acceptance of 
' The Grove ' was wholly against his own inclinations. The 
offer had not merely to be made, but most strongly pressed. 



A MEMOIK 185 

Eeluctant in old days to take a ' small ' house, he was still 
more unwilling to bear the burden of the exceptionally heavy 
responsibilities which attached to this larger establishment. 
He even doubted his powers and his likelihood of success. 
But acceptance was persistently urged upon him — one of his 
colleagues speaking of it as 'a crowning service ' — and he 
most reluctantly gave way and assented to the Headmaster's 
earnest wishes. 

Three years afterwards Dr. Butler resigned, being ap- 
pointed to the vacant Deanery of Gloucester ; and a new 
chapter opened in the history of the School. Edward 
Bowen lost more than one colleague by the change, for 
another familiar figure withdrew from Harrow at the same 
time. Mr. John Farmer was offered the post of organist 
at Balliol College, Oxford, and feeling that the old School, 
without the face of so cherished and so loyal a friend as 
the retiring Headmaster, could never be the same place 
again, accepted the proposal made to him. The consequent 
loss to the School was almost irreparable. His peculiar 
talents, his geniality, his love of boyhood, his sympathy 
with every form of young life, his belief in music as a 
great popular educator, his enthusiasm for corporate sing- 
ing as an evidence and guarantee of good-fellowship, his 
quaint racy humour — all these had made him a personality 
impossible to replace. Edward Bowen felt the separation 
not a little ; and he wrote one of the most beautiful of all 
his songs in connection with it. Its title is ' Songs,' and it 
deals with their coming, then with their sleep in death, and 
then with their resurrection and new life, as the presence of 
old friends is felt, as the gladness of young voices is heard : 

While 'mid the breezes 

Life breathes free, 
Ere trouble freezes 

Youth's blue sea, 
'Mid hopes attendant, 

Play, work, home, 
Surging, resplendent — 

So songs come ! 



186 EDWABD BOWEN 

Songs, where the thought was, 

If aught true, 
If tender aught was, 

There hide too ; 
Down in the chamber, 

Hearts hold deep, 
Cradled in amber — 

So songs sleep ! 

When droops the boldest, 

When hope flies, 
When hearts are coldest, 

Dead songs rise ; 
Young voices sound still, 

Bright thoughts thrive, 
Friends press around still — 

So songs live ! 

Enough perhaps has been said of Edward Bowen's rela- 
tions to Dr. Butler, and this is not the occasion on which 
to attempt any appreciation of the retiring Headmaster's 
services to the School in which he had been educated, and 
over which he ruled for a quarter of century with such 
fidelity to its truest and deepest interests. Edward Bowen 
never wrote, at any rate for publication, any estimate of his 
famous and widely loved chief ; but it has been left to his 
chief to write some lines upon him — lines expressive of the 
regard and affection, of the admiration both upon per- 
sonal and professional grounds, which the senior felt for 
his subordinate. Dr. Butler's testimony to what Edward 
Bowen was, both in character and in capacity, had best be 
quoted at this particular point — when their long and true 
colleagueship comes to an end — rather than later, as one 
among the other tributes from friends and associates, whose 
voices, when all was over, joined ' to praise the memory of a 
famous man.' 

Kinloch-Bannoch, Perthshire. 
My dear Bowen, — My little contribution to your Memoir may 
be made perhaps most simply in the form of a letter to yourself. 
To be in any sense a critic of your Uncle, my own dear friend 



A MEMOIR 187 

of more than forty years, would be to me most distasteful, and 
indeed impossible. 

In an informal letter I may perhaps be able to note just a few 
points in his work and character which, obvious as they are, you 
may think worthy of record. 

It will not, I hope, be treason to the right proportion of things 
if I begin with what every one knows, his persistent devotion to 
the games of the boys. More, probably, than any master who .has 
ever lived at Harrow, he gave his heart to their games as well as 
to their work. 

'Mr. Bowen's Match' was always the first of the summer 
term. 

It was he who organised the games between the masters and 
the boys after tea on summer evenings. 

It was he who, in spite of many warnings from doctors, con- 
tinued during the football season to play almost every day of the 
week ; first, and that for many years, as an active runner, and 
latterly rather as a trusted umpire to whose decision no one could 
demur. 

For racquets, the gymnasium, and the rifle corps, he cared com- 
paratively little. They appealed less to his sense of comradeship, 
of each man supporting his fellow, of quiet disciplined endurance, 
of constant self-suppression on the part of the individual in 
deference to the interests of the side as a whole. 

As to the educating effect of cricket and football, he did not 
care to preach ; but he would never have hesitated to avow, what 
his actions for forty years proclaimed, that, in his deliberate judg- 
ment, they were second to nothing in fostering a healthy, manly, 
unselfish, corporate life. 

He joined in them with all the instinct of a boy and a young 
man of exceptional bodily energy ; but had this simple instinct 
been less fresh within him, he would none the less have thrown 
himself into the games from a clear sense of professional duty. 

This side of his character, daily and yearly in evidence, added 
greatly to his influence in all matters intellectual and moral. The 
Shakespeare readings which for many years he arranged on 
Saturday evenings, the lessons which he gave in School on political 
and military history, the brilliant lectures which he occasionally 
delivered before the whole School in the Speech-room, were all 
weighted, as it were, by the knowledge on the part of the boys that 
this bright, eager, fascinating man, to whom all treasures of the 
mind' were attractive and sacred, was also their tried companion 
on the cricket ground and the football field. 



188 EDWAED BOWEN 

If we turn now to his more directly intellectual work at 
Harrow, the Modern Side will, I suppose, be generally regarded 
as its chief monument. In 1869 he received a virtually free hand 
to institute this new departure in Harrow life. His keen love of 
literature, ancient and modern, was a guarantee that the innova- 
tion would not be revolutionary, and that no merely utilitarian 
conception of learning would be the ideal of our Modern scholars. 
One important point was agreed upon from the first. The 
Modern Side must be carefully guarded from any fears or hopes 
that it would become a 'refuge for the destitute,' the home or 
harbour of our duller boys. 

It was to start with no Fourth Forms, still less any ' Lower 
Lower First.' Its lowest Forms were to rank with the Shells on 
the Classical Side, and admission was to be given only after a not 
too easy examination. Considerable pressure was put on your 
Uncle, almost at the outset, to lower this standard, but he resolutely 
persisted, and of course was always supported by the Headmaster. 
The new institution soon took its place. The prestige of his name 
and varied acquirements gave it a prestige of its own in the eyes 
of the public at large, of preparatory schoolmasters, and, not least, 
of the boys themselves. There were not many men to whom this 
experiment could have been safely confided at a school like 
Harrow ; but no critic, however conservative, or however convinced 
of the pre-eminent value of classical culture, could look down on a 
system of study of which a scholar like Edward Bowen was the 
head. 

Thus much, or, perhaps I should say, thus little, as to the 
Modern Side, his own special creation. You will like to have 
a few words from me as to his general influence as an Assistant 
Master. 

It certainly will not surprise you to hear that he was singularly 
fresh and fertile in suggestions. The desire to make good better, 
and better best, was with him an instinct. ' What could be done 
to add swiftness, ease, brightness, thoroughness, honesty, to the 
working of the School machine ? ' This was to him a constant 
thought. 

How often he would write to me suggesting improvements as 
to prizes, punishments, use of translations, dress, diet, discipline, 
masters' meetings, ' bills,' i.e. callings over of the boys' names on 
holiday ! The object and tendency of such suggestions was to 
' break every yoke,' to minimise formalism, to encourage freedom, 
to withdraw restrictions unless they were clearly needed. 

Sometimes his proposals were gratefully accepted; but it is 



A MEMOIE 189 

but fair to him to add that, if they were not accepted, he never 
showed any sign of annoyance, or was less ready to make others 
in future. 

But of course, apart from all this fresh current of suggestive- 
ness lay, in the background, the character of the man, a character 
that no one will ever so describe as to satisfy the friends who 
knew him. We may, if we please, apply to it such poor words as 
'force,' 'dignity,' ' winningness,' 'versatility,' 'humour,' 'charm,' 
but such units do not make up a whole. 

Perhaps it is better to say in the fewest and simplest words 
that we were all proud of him. As long as he was with us, we were 
privileged to see a very beautiful sight. We saw year by year 
his noble seriousness of purpose and his sweet tenderness of heart, 
set off, not in any way disguised, by his quick playfulness and 
frequent paradox. He found his happiness in habitual self-sacri- 
fice. Always reserving a large tithe of his keenest interest for the 
gravest public questions, political and theological, he gave him- 
self with perfect devotion to his home, to the School as a whole, 
to the boys in his house, and to the other masters. It may 
safely be said that no master at a public school ever won more 
brotherly love from his colleagues. And if we are asked as to 
the value of such an example — where are the scales that can 
weigh it ? 

And now a few closing words as to his songs, possibly his most 
precious, and assuredly his most enduring, contribution to the life 
of Harrow. 

Of their purely literary merits I will not presume to speak in 
detail, contenting myself with saying that alike in motif, delicacy 
of touch, finish of expression, mastery of metrical cadence, and 
above all, sympathy with the ' myriad-minded ' moods of boy-life 
at a great historic school, they are, in my judgment, genuine 
poetry, and will take no second place among the best lyrics of this 
order. 

On such matters, however, critics, especially when they are 
dear friends and colleagues, must always be very fallible. Where 
I claim a more than papal infallibility is in the declaration 
ex cathedra, from my post of Headmaster, that the songs proved 
from the first, and never lost their spell, of quite extraordinary 
value in promoting good fellowship among the boys and in forging 
links of love and loyalty between the passing generations of 
Harrow men. 

And here another name and another presence force themselves 
upon us. It is hard to believe that they too are but a memory. 



190 EDWAED BO WEN 

Let me, however, indulge it just for a moment. To me at least it 
is still a vision. 

It was delightful to see John Farmer's face of joy and mystery 
when he came to report that another of Bowen's songs, and yet 
another, was either newly on the anvil or just welded and polished 
into shape and beauty. 

Sometimes, like ' Queen Elizabeth,' it was delicious nonsense, 
in which even Mr. Gladstone could join with enthusiasm, and 
become, as he sang it, almost a Harrow boy. Sometimes, like the 
' Fairies,' or ' Songs,' or ' Good Night,' or • Yesterday,' it unsealed 
some of the deeper fountains of human emotion, stirred, no doubt, 
specially and illumined by the genius loci of Harrow, but happily 
common to ' all sorts and conditions of men ' in those pure and 
simple moods of mind and heart of which memory, rather than 
imagination, has the key. 

Never, surely, was there a happier alliance than that of Edward 
Bowen and John Farmer. No two men could be more unlike in 
original gifts, in education, in physical activities, in knowledge of 
the world. But love of Harrow and of free boy-life revealed each 
to each, and made them brothers. By a coincidence which their 
contemporaries may love to remember, they died within a few 
weeks of each other. No one ventured to tell Farmer, on his 
dying bed of lingering pain, that Bowen was gone — taken from us 
in a moment, a moment of unclouded happiness. Their bodies 
are ' buried in peace,' the one under the southern shadow of the old 
Harrow church, not many yards from the gate of ' The Grove ; ' the 
other at Oxford, his second English home, a few feet from the 
grave of Jowett, who appreciated and loved him, and whose love 
was returned with no common reverence and affection. ' Their 
bodies are buried in peace,' but — at Harrow at least it is no 
exaggeration to say — ' their name liveth for evermore.' 

Always, my dear Bowen, affectionately yours, 
H. Montagu Butler 



191 



IV 

Upon Dr. Butler's resignation in 1885, it was only to be 
expected that among the names mentioned in connection 
with the vacant headmastership should be that of Edward 
Bowen. Some of his colleagues sincerely desired his election 
and endeavoured to secure it ; but the majority shrank 
from an appointment which would have been significant upon 
more grounds than one. Edward Bowen was not only a 
layman, but was believed to be now separated by a distinct 
cleavage from the religious opinions of the clergy. He 
had also, as has been seen, very strong political views — 
views which did not represent the educational staff at 
Harrow as a whole — and these as well militated against him. 
His claims were, however, very strongly urged by his friends ; 
and although he never entered upon any formal candidature 
for the great position, he allowed his name to be seriously 
discussed. The Governors of the School invited the staff to 
express their opinion as to the best appointment, and a 
meeting of the masters was held to consider their reply. 
Edward Bowen's name was at once brought forward, and it 
was moved that he be recommended. Eight voted in favour 
of the proposal ; the others concurred in recommending the 
Eev. J. E. C. Welldon, at the time Headmaster of Dulwich. 
At the last hour an attempt was made by two or three of the 
staff to vary the recommendation by urging the name of 
Dr. Percival (afterwards Bishop of Hereford), but it came to 
nothing, and Mr. "Welldon was unanimously elected. There 
can now be no doubt that the governing body missed two great 
opportunities. Dr. Percival had made at Clifton a big reputa- 
tion based upon several years of solid, untiring work. The 
indebtedness of that school to him was very large, and his 
selection for Harrow would have meant the appointment of 



192 EDWAED BOWEN 

a first-rate educationist, a man of strong views and resolute 
character, but able to work pleasantly and considerately 
with his subordinates and to secure their loyalty and regard. 
As to the measure of loss entailed in the refusal by the 
majority of the assistant masters to recommend Edward 
Bowen, or in the omission of the Governors to choose him 
on their own independent responsibility, each reader of this 
memoir will form his own estimate. It is, however, scarcely 
too much to say that five years afterwards, had the assistant 
masters then had their chance over again, they would pro- 
bably have selected him as their nominee well nigh unani- 
mously. When in 1899 the fresh chance did at last come, 
all question of utilising it was settled by the fact that Edward 
Bowen was then sixty-three years of age, and himself felt that 
it was essential that the reins of school-government should 
be in younger hands. At the same time he never seriously 
regretted that the fates had stood between him and a position 
higher than that of an assistant master. He felt indeed 
that a headmastership would have meant for him full oppor- 
tunity to develop his own ideals and to carry into effect his 
own reforms ; but the position had one drawback which 
counted for much in his eyes. A headmaster can scarcely 
be on the same level of intimacy with the boys as an assistant 
master, and for Edward Bowen most of the pleasure and 
happiness of educational work consisted in the closeness of 
colleagueship with boy-life. The fact that he was never 
Headmaster of Harrow, though deplored by others, was not 
one of the real disappointments of his career. 

The reorganisation of the school-work was a matter to 
which the new Headmaster at once gave his attention upon 
coming into residence. Into this Edward Bowen and some 
of his colleagues not only threw themselves vigorously, 
but were prepared to go a good deal further than the changes 
actually introduced. The teaching at Harrow (as doubtless 
at all public schools) is done partly in forms, partly in 
divisions which are not identical with the forms, and partly 
in pupil-rooms. The basis is the form ; but for certain 
subjects, such as French, mathematics, science, the boys are 
re-grouped, while in a pupil-room there may only be some 



A MEMOIR 193 

half-dozen members, or even less, of one particular form, 
since a tutor's pupils will only number about forty in all. 
Edward Bowen — and he represented others as well as himself 
— was anxious to extend the principle of ' divisions ' as 
against the principle of 'forms.' The latter he would have 
kept together by the teaching of Scripture, Latin, history, 
and literature ; but he desired to teach other subjects, in- 
cluding Greek, in ' divisions.' By this means a fusion of the 
Classical and Modern Sides would have been possible, and 
such a fusion he was prepared to take into serious considera- 
tion. The changes which were actually effected did not go 
so far as he wished ; but there was a certain amount of very 
careful reorganisation, and the alterations which were then 
made have in the main been permanent. 



Twenty years divide Edward Bowen's acceptance of a 
large house from his death. During the whole of this time 
he continued at ' The Grove,' though when the end came he 
was probably within a few months of resigning it. The 
house stands, as has been said, right on the summit of the 
hill, quite close to the church, and its garden is in beauty 
second to no spot in Harrow. As time went on, he pur- 
chased the freehold, with a view to presenting it to the 
School. The deed of gift was not signed by him, but upon 
his death it was found that he had provided that his inten- 
tions in this matter should be duly carried into effect ; and 
' The Grove ' is now the property of the Governors, forming 
part of the splendid bequest which he left to them. Upon 
taking over the House in the summer of 1882 he at once 
threw himself into its interests and needs. All the boys' 
part was rebuilt by him at his own expense, and in this 
rebuilding he introduced a change which has since been 
enforced to a great extent by the authorities throughout the 
rest of the School. It had been the general practice to put 
boys two together — the same room being both study and 
bedroom — reserving single rooms for the few upper boys. 
Edward Bowen introduced single rooms for all boys ; and 
this the Governors now require in all the houses, as far 

o 



194 EDWAED BO WEN 

as space will permit. The dormitory system with separate 
studies he made no attempt to initiate. He did Dot think 
it necessary, and would probably have opposed it. In 
another respect, too, he was the protagonist in the matter 
of reform. Hitherto it had been usual to give boys for 
breakfast no more than coffee or tea and slices of bread and 
butter. The fare was obviously insufficient, and the boys 
were in the habit of themselves supplementing it by pur- 
chasing meat or sausages from some cook-shop and carrying 
in the additional food with them to the meal. The practice 
was permitted and recognised even in the best houses. 
Edward Bowen, however, very properly stopped it, and 
himself added meat for breakfast. This, again, is now the 
general rule of the School. His influence was, however, 
against luxuries, even to the comparatively small extent to 
which they usually entered into Harrow life. His own in- 
difference to them has already been noticed, and that indiffer- 
ence he sought to instil into others. In other houses any 
boy might have an arm-chair ; at ' The Grove ' nobody 
under the dignity of a Sixth Form boy might utilise one. 
So, too, fires were always begun later and left off earlier than 
by the other house-masters. The rooms were small and the 
furniture old. It was not that he regarded the pleasures 
of life as necessarily mala per se ; on the contrary, they 
were in his eyes good and desirable, so long as they were 
not permitted to dominate habits or to injure character ; 
but he despised comforts and knick-knacks himself as not 
ministering to healthy and wholesome pleasure, and he 
thought it better that boys should be trained and encouraged 
to despise them, especially since he realised that they 
brought with them an element of moral danger to young 
life. The old pupil whose reminiscences of ' The Grove ' are 
given a little further on ' recalls how he was once blamed 
for indulging in a practice suggestive of ' the later Eomans ; ' 
and it was as tending to ' later Romanism ' that Edward 
Bowen discountenanced arm-chairs, early fires, warm baths, 
and daintily furnished rooms. Freshness, vigour, hardihood, 
simplicity, these were the characteristics which he sought 

1 Vide pp. 204-208. 



A MEMOIE 195 

to attach to his pupils, and a soft luxurious life was, 
he knew, not the way in which these qualities are to 
be acquired. His own life certainly was neither soft nor 
luxurious. His bedroom was roughly furnished ; his draw- 
ing room was about on the level, both as to artistic develop- 
ment and otherwise, of that of an ordinary lodging-house ; 
while his study — who shall describe it ? It must be sufficient 
to say of it that it was carpeted with two or three pieces of 
old carpet, not of the same pattern and hue. Wooden book- 
cases crammed with books ran round the walls. In the 
middle was a writing table, with a common table added at 
each end, the whole being covered with papers of one kind 
or another. His usual chair was a wooden one, while the 
only arm-chair in the room was of extreme antiquity. There 
were two or three cheap prints over or near the fireplace, 
and there were divers articles on the mantelpiece, though 
these latter could not have been described by the most kindly 
of critics as ornaments ; while there were some very shabby 
green blinds, but no curtains, to the windows. In such 
a room as this one of the greatest educationists of the 
nineteenth century sat and worked. If this, however, was 
sufficient for him, it was not to be expected that he would 
provide something altogether different for his boys. ' The 
disciple is not above his master.' 

Edward Bowen as a house-master was throughout an ex- 
tremely strict disciplinarian. His vigilance was untiring. His 
rules were few and simple, but they had to be obeyed. He 
always let it be understood that he would not keep a boy 
who would not conform to them, and he was surprisingly suc- 
cessful in detecting breaches of them. ' Bowen,' writes an 
old head of his House, ' had the most extraordinary way of 
turning up unexpectedly. He always wore thick, heavy 
boots ; the floors were all of wood ; and yet he walked so 
noiselessly that you never heard him until he turned the 
handle of your door.' In a paper from which quotations have 
already been given, Edward Bowen has spoken of the master 
as having no chance against the ' crib ; ' but at ' The Grove ' 
the ' crib ' had no chance against the master. One evening, 
after he had been a short while in charge, he offered to accept 

o 2 



196 EDWAED BOWEN 

without punishment any translations which the owners 
might find it difficult to conceal. The surrenders were to 
be made before nightfall. Enough ' cribs ' to fill a wheel- 
barrow were delivered up in response. The back of the 
offence was thereby broken ; and these aids to the higher 
learning were afterwards almost unknown in the House. He 
was, too, very resolute with regard to customs. He would 
have none of those minute, irritating regulations which 
tradition sometimes imposes. There were the usual privi- 
leges for the senior boys, but the nonsensical prohibitions 
of this or that on the ground of bad form or ' swagger ' 
were made away with, and the House was kept absolutely 
clear of them. Nothing that the house-master disapproved 
of was tolerated ; everything was scrupulously organised and 
carefully watched over. It was a strictness of rule which 
certainly fretted some boys a little ; while the ruler was not 
always popular, and often not fully understood, though not 
often actually misunderstood. But his determination, with 
his gaiety to help it, carried him through ; and as time went 
on, and those who had been in the House became not only 
old pupils but also fast friends, and exercised their influence 
upon those who came after them, he succeeded in com- 
pletely winning the boys as a whole, and in obtaining from 
them a grateful and affectionate recognition of his wisdom 
and earnestness and devotion. 

There was, too, a trait in his character as master which 
was not realised by those who only knew him slightly and 
superficially, but which was seen clearly enough by friends 
and pupils who were intimate with him, and which un- 
doubtedly had a large measure of influence in gaining the 
loyalty of the senior boys, and in deepening their sense of 
duty and responsibility. He took things intensely to heart. 
Any real trouble in the School or House was a matter of acute 
pain and distress to him. On one occasion a lad (not in 
his House), detected in misconduct which necessitated his 
withdrawal from the School, asked, in the hour of his 
misery, to see Edward Bowen. The master came from 
the interview with great tears rolling down his cheeks. * I 
cannot think how he gets over things so easily,' he once 
observed of a colleague. 'I don't know,' he said to a 



A MEMOIE 197 

pupil on the occasion of some trouble in the House, ' what 
I should do if that were to happen again. I believe 
I should cut my throat.' Such a characteristic no doubt 
meant that at times he would take, what might seem to 
others who were less sensitive than himself, an exaggerated 
view of some occurrence, and it undoubtedly must have 
greatly increased for him the wear and tear of a house- 
master's life ; on the other hand, all that was best and 
nicest in boy-nature shrank from exciting pain of which the 
acuteness was beyond question. 

How true the House were willing to be to him in a 
crisis, and how studious to carry out any real request which 
he made to them, was once shown in a very striking manner. 
Edward Bowen was in the middle of term obliged to leave 
Harrow for three weeks in order to undergo medical 
treatment. It was necessary to find some colleague 
to take charge of the House, and he asked one of the 
junior masters to do so. Before leaving, he said a few 
words to the House, appealing to them to be well con- 
ducted and loyal. The result may be given in the words of 
the locum tenens : 

I shall always remember with gratitude the kindness and con- 
sideration I received in the House, from the Sixth Form down to 
the Fourth. I think it no slight testimony to his influence over 
his House that, among so large a number of all ages, not one 
showed the least inclination to give me any trouble, or to take the 
trifling advantages that boys are apt to think it fair game to take 
over the inexperience of an outsider. 

It need not be said that Edward Bowen's interest in 
athletics showed itself very strongly in connection with his 
House. He played regularly with his boys, and if the 
weather was such that either cricket or football (as the case 
might be) was out of the question, he would organise a 
house-walk. But he would do nothing for the gymnasium 
or the rifle corps. Both became in later years pet aversions 
of his. They neither of them supplied a game. The gym- 
nasium, too, did nothing to promote corporate life, and 
in this circumstance Edward Bowen would find a strong 
reason for its discouragement ; while the rifle corps had 
this further grave objection, that it was, without being 



198 EDWAED BOWEN 

really professional soldiering, provocative of the military 
spirit. At one time there was not a single boy in his 
House who was a member of the corps. But keen as was 
his interest in cricket and football, eager and unfailing as 
was his encouragement of them, ' The Grove ' was never the 
champion house — or, to use the common School expression, 
' cock house ' — in either game. The reason is not far to 
seek. Edward Bowen's theory that boys generally stayed 
too late at school has already been alluded to, and it will 
be noticed again in connection with his striking evidence 
before ' the Bryce Commission ; ' and it was the fact that 
he acted as far as possible upon this theory which stood 
between ' The Grove ' and athletic supremacy. The football 
team, for instance, was generally younger than its rivals, 
and although its members always played a good game — 
sometimes a game distinctly beyond their physical powers — 
yet they were never able to go through a season unbeaten. 
The same circumstance militated against the House in the 
matter of scholastic distinctions. Edward Bowen often had 
able and promising boys, but during the twenty years that 
he was at ' The Grove ' he had only one head of the School. 
The House had, it need hardly be said, several special 
songs of its own. These were written for the annual House 
suppers at the end of the Christmas term, and were mixed 
in with such toasts as 'Age and Wisdom,' 'The Heroes,' 
'British Oratory,' 'Lobengula,' 'The Muses,' ' The Muscles,' 
' The Lord Chancellor.' They were not infrequently House 
versions of the best known and most popular of the School 
songs. For example, ' Queen Elizabeth ' had this absurd 
sequel, in which the building of ' The Grove ' and the selec- 
tion of red as the House colour find their explanation : 

Queen Elizabeth sat once more, 
Sceptre in hand, on Dover shore ; 
Eound about her are fifty score 

Ladies and knights of Dover. 
Close the enemy's fleet came near ; 
Ladies and knights, in mortal fear, 
Take the express to Windermere, 

All but the bold sea rover ! 

Queen Elizabeth sat once more, &c. 



A MEMOIE 199 

Queen Elizabeth, all aglow, 
Doubled her fist, and viewed the foe ; 
(' Body o' me ! ' she cried also ; 

' Marry come up ! ' moreover ;) 
Bover jumps on the castle wall, 
Loads a gun with an iron ball : 
Down go enemy's fleet and all, 

Thanks to the bold sea rover ! 

Queen Elizabeth sat once more, &c. 

but joy at the great success 

Pills the heart of the good Queen Bess : 

Doesn't she just the hero bless, 
Doesn't he blush, all over ! 

' Odds and boddikins ! here's a man ! 

Arma virumque ! Sister Anne ! 

Is it a shirt of scarlet flan- 
nel on your breast, my rover ? ' 

Queen Elizabeth sat once more, &c. 

' Send for Lyon,' she cries, ' again ; 
Say he must build with might and main 
Far the best of his houses ten 

Just where the Eoss and Grove are ; 
All the bravest of boys shall wear 
Shirt of red like the rover here : 
And shall the Supper be once a year ? ' 
' Yes,' says the bold sea rover ! 

Queen Elizabeth sat once more, &c. 

Even more amusing is a song written upon the Soudan 
campaign, in which several old pupils had been engaged. 
This, however, has no counterpart in the School Song-book. 
It should perhaps be added, that at the time of its com- 
position the Khalifa had not yet met his real fate, and 
that therefore poetical licence upon the subject of his destiny 
was not only permissible but obviously necessary. 

THE KHALIFA, 1898 

Further than the Sphinx is 

"Went the gallant Three, 
(Bad the lack of drinks is, 

Bad the fly and flea ;) 



200 EDWAED BOWEN 

Looking out at Philae, 

Berber, Atbara, 
(Dirty, crocodily,) 

For the Khalifa. 

1 W came the first, he 

Bode upon a Gee ; 

2 S on foot was thirsty, 

Thirsty too was C. 3 
' Boys,' they say, ' of virtue, 

From The Grove we are, 
And we come to hurt you, 

Ugly Khalifa ! 

' C and S and W 

(Prom The Grove, you know), 
Sad indeed to trouble you, 

But you've got to go. 
For we know Macaulay, 

And the Prussian War, 
And can kick a ball a 

Little, Khalifa ! ' 

Not a word replied he, 

But he blacker grew, 
And, unterrified, e- 

jaculated 'Pooh ! 
So they want to harm me ! 

Ho ! ' he cried, and ' Ha ! 
Go at them, my army ! ' 

Said the Khalifa. 

Ninety millions, black, but 

Destitute of dress, 
Charge, to sound of sackbut, 

W, C, and S. 
Few can rush as they did, 

Breathing blood and war, 
(Personally aided 

By the Khalifa.) 

1 P. W. W., 21st Lancers. 

2 J. W. S., Cameron Highlanders. 

3 G. S. C, Gren. Guards. 



A MEMOIE 201 

C came on, they wondered ; 

S came on, they swore ; 
W killed a hundred — 

Possibly some more. 
Camels and pavilions 

Flee away afar, 
And the ninety millions, 

And the Khalifa ! 

How their fame is wafted, 

W, 8, and C ! 
1 (0 has telegraphed it, 

So it true must be !) 
In their native island 

When they safely are, 
Came a crocodile, and 

Ate the Khalifa. 

Edward Bowen's religious influence upon his House 
was that of a man who felt deeply, but who, as a rule, 
said little ; and what he did say dealt rather with the moral, 
than with the doctrinal, aspects of Christianity. From 
Christianity, as commonly understood and received, he was 
no douht divided ; though his reticence — -a reticence only 
rarely thrown off, and never in response to anything which 
might be interpreted as mere curiosity — makes it difficult to 
measure the precise extent of this division. Faith was to 
him loyalty to good and to ' the larger hope ' — which, how- 
ever, he throughout ' trusted ' not ' faintly,' but w T ith whole- 
hearted sincerity. ' True religion ' was to his mind the 
desire to do right ; and on this interpretation of the words 
no one was ever more truly religious. But the mystical and 
contemplative aspects of Christianity had towards the end, 
and for a considerable number of years before the end, no 
attraction for him, and did not appeal to him, so far as his 
own personal life was concerned. ' I have no desire,' he 
once wrote, * to be more religious than my boys.' He made, 
therefore, comparatively little effort to teach religious dogma 
— he certainly would never have done violence to his con- 
science over the matter — and so far as he taught it at all, 

1 L. C. F. 0., Correspondent, Central News. 



202 EDWARD BOWEN 

did so mainly with the view of introducing his pupils to a 
subject, and of enabling them to appreciate the outlines of 
some question. In connection with the preparation of boys 
for Confirmation, he always held that the lessons given by a 
House-master were to be regarded as supplementary to those 
given by the Headmaster, and that as the latter was in 
Holy Orders it was with him that the responsibility rested 
for such purely doctrinal teaching as might be considered 
desirable. At the same time Edward Bowen's Confirmation 
lessons made a very deep impression upon his boys. He 
used the late Dean Vaughan's well-known Manual, though 
perhaps as a guide for himself, and not as a text-book for 
the candidates to work upon ; and the pencil-marks in 
his copy seem to show the special points upon which he 
desired to insist — an evil spirit, impatience of reproof, passion 
and ill temper, temptation of others, luxury, disregard of the 
poor, the dangers of amusements, the dangers of games, the 
love of popularity, the graver vices of boyhood and manhood. 
He used to set, too, a few questions to be answered on paper, 
such as the following : 

What does a Baptist argue ? What can be said on the other 
side ? 

What is the Church, and why have one ? 

What was required in Christ's time to become a Christian ? 

What are the chief differences between Catholics and Protes- 
tants ? 

What two duties are there with regard to religious beliefs? 

Is irreverence wrong ? Any test ? 

Will you say what you really think about swearing ? [Edward 
Bowen regarded it himself as a somewhat serious vice.] 

What is the Kingdom of Heaven ? 

Re-write according to modern ideas any parts of the Catechism 
which seem antiquated. 

Do you agree with what I said about debt ? 

' Confession : ' what do Protestants generally think about it, 
and why? When is it right and wise? [asked in 1900]. 

Try and write carefully and thoughtfully ' My duty to the 
House.' 

He had, as has been said, two or three cheap prints in 
his study. One of these was that of the Zouave Trappist 



A MEMOIE 203 

absorbed in silent meditation. He was fond of referring to 
it in connection with his Confirmation teaching, and perhaps 
at other times too. 'Was the Zouave right? No, boy, 
he was shirking. You must stay in the world and do all 
the good you can in it.' Jean Valjean, the Bishop, and the 
candle-sticks, were another favourite topic. ' It is your soul 
that I am buying.' He discouraged morbid reflections, 
unsuitable for young life. ' It is not your business to think 
about heaven and hell ; what you have to do is to make 
other people happier in this world.' He was at all times 
insistent upon the misleading character of common sayings. 
'"Money is the source of all evil:" say, "Money is the 
source of all good." One is just as true as the other.' At all 
times, too, he was insistent upon self-sacrifice even in the 
smallest things. ' Never take the corner seat in a railway 
carriage when other people are in the compartment.' 'If 
you are going by train to play cricket, always travel third 
class ; there may be men in the eleven to whom the differ- 
ence in cost is of importance.' 

An adequate summary of Edward Bowen's ideas of the 
truly religious life is not far to seek. It was perfectly ex- 
pressed by himself in some exquisite lines entitled ' Shemuel,' 
which he wrote about 1869, and sent to more than one 
friend as a Christmas carol. 1 Shemuel is a Bethlehemite 
shepherd, unable to go with his fellows on the occasion when 
the angelic visitants were revealed to them, since he is 
detained by the duty of tending a guest stricken with fever. 
His comrades return from the fields full of the vision, and 
conscious of the advent of the Divine kingdom. He sits on 
in the sick-chamber, ungladdened by any miraculous revela- 
tion, but destined to be ' preferred before ' them. 

Works of mercy now, as then, 
Hide the angel host from men ; 
Hearts atune to earthly love 
Miss the angel notes above ; 
Deeds, at which the world rejoices, 
Quench the sound of angel voices. 

1 It will be found among the Appendices, p. 414. 



204 EDWAED BOWEN 

So they thought, nor deemed from whence 

His celestial recompense. 

Shemuel, by the fever bed, 

Touched by beckoning hands that led, 

Died, and saw the Uncreated ; 

All his fellows lived, and waited. 

Upon Edward Bowen's death, an old pupil, whose career 
at Harrow was followed by one of much distinction at 
Cambridge, contributed to ' The Harrovian ' (the School 
magazine) an appreciative article upon him ' in the House,' 
and has been good enough to allow the author of this 
memoir to make use of it. The paper — of which the 
greater part is here given — will be read with interest 
as coming from the pen not only ' of a ready ' and gifted 
'writer,' but of one who was for three or four years an 
inmate of ' The Grove,' and who was bound to Edward 
Bowen by strong ties of affection and esteem, Mr. George 
M. Trevelyan writes as follows : 

There are indeed special reasons why some account of Bowen's 
personality as a house-master would be (if it were obtainable) 
necessary to complete the idea of him as a servant of Harrow and 
as a man. For he held that intellect was only the handmaid of 
conduct, and that conduct lay almost as much among the small 
incidents of life as among the great. It followed that his work as 
a Harrow master consisted largely in teaching boys by example 
the spirit of contentedness and eagerness in which we should greet 
all chances, competitions, and necessities — ' how to take sweet and 
bitter as sweet and bitter comes.' Of course we of his House had 
in this respect more opportunity than others : we saw a greater 
variety of hours and incidents, things big and little, fired by the 
bright yet serene ray of his interest which idealised everything. 
Unconsciously we sucked in his never spoken, ever acted doctrine ; 
that the goodness of life consists not in the greater or less quantity 
of pleasure or even opportunity, but in the spirit in which one 
takes it — that the proof of the pudding is not the number of 
plums it contains, but the eating. 

A typical Bowenite institution was astronomy. Every boy in 
his House had to attend two courses of astronomy before he left ; 
one astronomy proper, the other the history of a war ; but in both 



A MEMOIR 205 

cases it was always 'astronomy.' l Bach Christmas term, for one 
evening in every week, the ' astronomers ' (roughly speaking, the 
middle-sized boys of the house) were gathered into the sanctum 
of the drawing-room, which was never entered by us (and seldom 
used by him) on other occasions. As a drawing-room it was neither 
artistically beautiful nor physically comfortable ; sestheticism and 
luxury were equally outside Bowen's line ; but its memory is 
far more venerable to me than gilded saloon or palace of art. 
Eound this room we sat, the swells on the sofa, the rest of us on the 
ancient drawing-room chairs or our own wooden chairs brought in, 
not without clatter. If it was astronomy proper, he explained to us 
the courses of the heavens, by aid of a little round table that was 
the sun, a cricket ball that was the moon, putting them through 
their various motions " in the centre of the room ; sometimes he 
himself actively personified the moon or some other heavenly 
body, while we sat round, critically spectatorial. We had no 
function but to look on, but evil waited on him who did not under- 
stand and remember, for next night, in the solitude after prayers, 
his light step was heard along the passages silently bearing the 
terrible ' astronomy questions ' to one room after another. We 
were not taken out to see and identify the real stars ; that was 
not part of the game. But the joys of astronomy in the year 
when it was a war more than made up for the alternate year's 
penance of astronomy proper. The Crimean war was good, but 
the Franco-Prussian war was justly the favourite, for he had 
followed it on foot behind the German armies ; so the clearest 
exposition possible of the outlines of campaign and battle were 
illuminated by personal incidents ; how he had hid the sword in 
his umbrella at Worth ; how, when he had attempted to enter 
France to follow the French armies, he had been refused entrance 
at the frontier, and had revenged himself by remarking, ' Next 
time I come into France I won't ask leave ; ' and so had gone 
with the Germans. 

1 When at the ' small ' house he once substituted anatomy for the history of a 
war. That year — to use his own expression — ' astronomy was bones.' Another 
old pupil, whose memory goes back to those earlier times, writes : ' There was at 
least one skull on the mantelpiece, and Bowen carried a skeleton hand attached 
to his waistcoat. It was this hand, I think, which was made the starting-point 
for a collection for the hospital. It became the right hand of " Jones," a poor 
man who needed assistance while learning to work with his left. A collection 
box stood on the study table with weekly bulletins of " Jones' " condition. He 
was just righting himself when he sustained a fracture of the tibia ; then some- 
thing else set in ; by the end of the term " Jones " had undergone every conceiv- 
able accident, disease, and operation.' 



206 EDWAED BOWEN 

Sixth Form pupil-room was no less an institution ; in the 
summer it was out on the lawn, between the cedar and the big 
blank wall. It was the most friendly and confidential of pupil- 
rooms, with a thousand little institutions and jokes, very dear to 
think of now. The lesson was classical. But during the latter 
part of the time that I was in Sixth Form pupil-room we were all 
either Modern Side or Classical scholars of the abortive type. 
Shortly before there had been ' scholars of marvellous force,' but 
he never seemed less interested in us for this decadence, but took 
us as we were, as he took all other things. He was just as 
interested in the Juvenal and Lucan lesson as if we had been 
'Blayds and Merivale, Hope, Monro.' The one indispensable 
piece of knowledge on which he insisted was the seven mouths of 
the Nile, which we rattled off faster than the tongue could really 
syllable the names — or else we heard, ' boy, do a map of the 
Nile in five paints, boy.' Once, for ignorance of the whereabouts 
of the Cocytus (which I think I placed in Asia Minor), I did a 
' map of hell in five paints, boy.' If the lesson was ended five 
minutes before time, there was then, of course, ample leisure to 
run through the history of the world B.C. with the aid of a 
diagram extemporised on the back of an envelope. 

Fifth Form pupil-room had more of severity and discipline ; 
but it too had its sacred customs, and jokes whose jest lay in the 
gravity with which they were treated. Thus the Modern Side 
boys were made to feel their inferior position in the world of 
scholarship by being required to do little more at the Homer 
lesson than to render ore Sr) by ' when at length,' and daXepdg 
TrapaKoirrjc by ' blooming husband.' 

To be late for dinner implied saying (or being ready to say), 
■ Phaselus ille.' Wherever, in South Africa, America, or London, 
you come across a man who combines extreme familiarity in that 
yacht song of Catullus with a scarcely proportionate knowledge of 
the rest of the classics, you may be sure he was at ' The Grove ' 
under Bowen. 

But Bowen was most Bowen at House supper. The after- 
dinner speech in his mouth became something rich and strange, 
about as different from the ordinary ' on this joyful occasion ' 
and ' gathered together as we once more are,' as ' St. Joles ' is 
different from the ' Death of Nelson.' It was for these House 
suppers that he wrote us those House versions of the School 
songs. 

The severity with which he enforced both School and House 
rules arose partly from a sense of the use of discipline, partly 



A MEMOIE 207 

from that love of institutions and idealisation of custom which in 
him was not pedantry but poetry. 

His anger was never hot, but very cold and very terrible, the 
withdrawal of approval and of confidence. He had in him an 
ever-welling fountain of cold indignation at wrong-doing that was 
never dried up by our never-ceasing calls upon its resources ; it 
was always forthcoming, of most genuine quality, terrifying the 
hardened and grieving the repentant. He had a way of making 
one feel that to do some things was wrong, and that wrong-doing 
was a definite thing, and ought not to be excused as a ' mistake ' 
or passed over in silence. 

There were two particulars in which he differed from the 
ordinary theories of house-mastering ; and to differ in theory was 
with him to differ in practice also. In the first place he held as a 
rule in life — not merely in school life, only especially in school 
life — that luxury was bad, and that plain living stood in some 
relation to high thinking and high acting. This theory (which 
was not always a paradox, and now the time gives proof of it) was 
held by Bowen unostentatiously, but most practically. He always 
acted, he seldom expounded his theories of conduct. The only 
lecture I ever heard him deliver on this subject of luxury can be 
reported at full ; finding that I was in the habit of taking two hot 
baths a week, he remarked with pathetic displeasure, ' boy, 
that's like the later Eomans, boy.' And so at ' The Grove,' though we 
had wherewithal to be filled, and whereon to sit down, we were not 
allowed to revel much in soft chairs or in strong meats. Fires in 
our rooms were only allowed late in the year ; too late we often 
thought, and used to march into his study to petition him for 
warmth, wrapped up in rugs and other Siberian disguises, to his 
intense delight and amusement. But he was not ascetic, for what 
good things be had to eat, he not only enjoyed, but idealised, as he 
did all the other little things of life, and all his bits of pleasures. 
Typical of this restrained but idealising attitude towards the 
smaller pleasures, was the institution of ' glorification cake.' After 
a house football match the eleven used to be taken into the dining- 
room on the private side, and tbere regaled on coffee and an 
immense rich round cake, which he cut up with sacrificial solemnity, 
either as ' glorification ' or (when occasion demanded) as ' consola- 
tion ' cake. 

Secondly, he did not consider that the house, any more than 
the school, was a fitting altar on which the individual should be 
sacrificed. He would suffer no one, who he thought would 
develop faster elsewhere, to stop on another year in order that 



208 EDWAED BOWEN 

' The Grove ' might be glorified. ' The Grove ' was in consequence 
noted for its youthfulness, and in spite of the keen interest in 
athletics and scholarly competitions which he fostered, and the 
very fair proportion of distinguished athletes and scholars we pro- 
duced, we were never 'cock house.' For, according to Bowen, 
though the master was made for the house, the house was made 
for the boy. Boys who he considered ought for their own sakes 
to go into a wider field of education or of activity, generally went, 
irrespective of whether the House lost or gained. This was not 
from want of feeling for the House ; his desire for its welfare and 
glory was his feeling for the School in epitome ; further, he 
himself would often have given much to keep boys to whom he 
was strongly attached. But personal wishes never influenced a 
decision of his life ; except sometimes in the negative, for self- 
denial's sake, provided it could pass unnoticed and unboasted. 
So he always acted on his principle that while it was the duty of 
a master alike in the cause of school and of house to spend and to 
be spent, it was his further duty to see that no boy was in any 
way sacrificed to either house or school. 

Was he a great house-master? If that question is to be 
decided solely by the greatness of the House as a corporation, he 
has for the reasons stated above no abnormal claim to distinction. 
But if it is to be decided by the effect produced on individuals 
and characters — the only standard he admitted — there are many 
of different kinds, occupations, and ages, who would answer to- 
gether, ' Yes, he was a very great house-master indeed.' 

The best way to realise what Bowen was like in the House, is 
to think what he was like in the School, or on a holiday. Those 
who saw him in one field can imagine him in all ; those who saw 
him in none can imagine him in none. He did not wish to be known 
or remembered by men ; but he wished to serve and be loved by 
many friends. Above all, thought he, to serve ; since to serve 
was the duty — to be loved, only the reward. 

Another old pupil — one who was both head of the House 
and head of the School 1 — bears the same testimony to 
what the relationship at ' The Grove ' between boy and 
master meant for the young immature life overshadowed by 
that strong and resolute, but at the same time tender and 
winning, character : 

1 Mr. R. Sanders. 



A MEMOIE 209 

There are few who were in his House that did not come away 
the better for his influence ; and here and there you will meet with 
men who tell you that all that is best in them they owe to 
Edward Bowen. 



In form-work throughout these twenty years Edward 
Bowen was absolutely at the height of his reputation. His 
idealism remained that to which he had given such vigorous 
expression in the essay on ' Teaching by means of Grammar/ 
published in 1867. 1 

To convince boys" that intellectual growth is noble, and in- 
tellectual labour happy, that they are travelling on no purposeless 
errand, mounting higher every step of the way, and may as truly 
enjoy the toil that lifts them above their former selves, as they 
enjoy a race or a climb ; to help the culture of their minds by 
every faculty of moral force, of physical vigour, of memory, of 
fancy, of humour, of pathos, of banter, that we have ourselves, 
and lead them to trust in knowledge, to hope for it, to cherish it ; 
this, succeed as it may here and fail there, quickened as it may 
be by health and sympathy, or deadened by fatigue or disappoint- 
ment, is a work which has in it most of the elements which life 
needs to give it zest. 2 

And his own life found this ' zest ' in teaching. Form- work 
was to him an intense enjoyment. It was more directly 
educational than some of the work in the house ; and it 
was without the particular anxieties and worries which are 
attached to a house. In 1901, when he was seriously 
contemplating resigning, or had actually made up his mind 
to resign, ' The Grove,' he proposed keeping on his form, 
which consisted of the members of the Modern Upper Fifth 
and Sixth. They were not, and never could become, any 
sort of burden to him, whatever the weariness of advancing 
years. And they received throughout all that was most 
brilliant in his nature, all that was most striking in his 
genius as a master. His fancy, his playfulness, his fun, his 
inventiveness, all these were given full play in his form- 

1 Vide pp. 99 ff. 2 Vide p. 314. 

- P 



210 BDWAED BOWEN 

work. A colleague has written of him as an 'enchanter,' 
and there was beyond question an element of enchantment 
in his teaching. The drudgery of learning vanished ; the 
dullness which often hangs like a cloud of London smoke 
over some lesson was never experienced. With him in the 
master's desk it became sheer delight to learn, and the form 
learnt readily. He could always get an immense amount 
of work out of them. It was, writes an old pupil, 
' mainly because the form guessed how much he worked for 
us. When we knew that he spent large parts of the night 
in preparing a map for us, we did not much mind some extra 
work in producing a careful copy of it.' Of discipline there 
was outwardly very little, and a certain amount of superficial 
insubordination at times prevailed. But it was superficial only. 
The whole of the fantastic fabric of form-life was built by those 
fairy fingers on a basis of absolute discipline ; and it was simply 
because this basis was realised and respected that such a 
fabric was possible. Edward Bowen's lightest word was, if 
seriously meant, law ; and the fact made many light words, 
which were not seriously meant, possible. He would always 
allow a certain amount of joking and badinage between him 
and the form, but there was a line which might not be 
crossed. The boys, for example, might laugh and chat with 
him, but they might not talk to one another ; nor did they, 
as a rule, attempt to do so. But within bounds there was a 
measure of something like licence which would have utterly 
horrified old-fashioned dominies, who had not learnt to 
' turn human,' and which would undoubtedly have startled 
even masters of a more modern and reasonable type. For 
example, on one occasion at the close of first school (8.45 a.m.) 
Edward Bowen set twenty sentences in connection with 
German grammar. The entire form declared that the task 
was too much, and refused to leave the room unless the 
sentences were reduced to fifteen. The mimic struggle went 
on for a few minutes, but at last terminated in a burst of 
good-humoured laughter as Edward Bowen threw himself 
back in his chair and observed that breakfast was getting 
cold. On another occasion he had a tussle — this time a 
genuine one — with two lads over some work which he 



A MEMOIE 211 

wanted them to do, but which they declined to attempt. 
Most masters would have laid down the law, given peremp- 
tory instructions, and threatened. Edward Bo wen brought 
the scene to a close by quietly saying ' Please,' and the two 
recalcitrants surrendered at once. A late boy would be 
greeted from all sides of the room by the cabman's ' elk ' 
' elk ; ' such sounds are unusual, to say the least of it, in an 
ordinary class-room, but Edward Bowen permitted them. 
'They were to encourage him to go faster and arrive 
earlier.' Three times late was, however, a real offence ; but 
it was met, not by lines, arbitrarily imposed by the man in 
authority, but by a punishment — often an analysis of some 
essay of Macaulay's — agreed on between master and delin- 
quent. Other penalties would be to go down such and 
such a road and count the trees on one side, or to bring back 
the name on the first shop after a given point. As Edward 
Bowen always knew the correct answer, having noted the 
circumstance in his own walks, guessing was out of the 
question, and there was nothing for it but to obtain the 
information by a voyage of personal discovery. 

Let us now, with the help of more than one old pupil, 1 
enter Edward Bowen'sForm, and watch him and his boys at 
work there. The class-room is in the buildings on the 
northern side of the chapel, and is in the basement. The 
entrance is down a flight of steps. The master will be 
there a few minutes before the Form, making certain pre- 
parations, and as the boys come in some of them ' will at 
once wander over to his blackboard, on which will be dis- 
played, it may be sketches of some battle-field or of some 
historic scene upon which he has been talking, or it may be 
some odd curiosity, such as [during the recent South African 
war] a Mafeking note, a soup-ticket from Ladysmith, a foreign 
political caricature, or, failing any of these, one of those 
coloured prints of moderately comic German domestic or 
military life.' These last obviously serve as incentives to the 
inferior German scholars to make out the letterpress with a 

1 I have to make special acknowledgment of several obligations : (1) to 
private correspondents ; (2) to a couple of admirable articles which appeared 
in the Journal of Education after Edward Bowen's death. 

p2 



212 EDWAED BOWEN 

view of seeing whatever degree of humour is to be seen. 
But another group will have gone straight to the master's 
desk, 'maintaining with him a continual fire of questions 
and quibble.' If he have brought any button-holes with him, 
as now and again he will do, there are eager requests for 
them, but early applicants are not always successful, and one 
flower is often reserved till after school, to be bestowed as a 
reward of merit upon some boy who has done particularly 
well. One other preliminary may be noticed, though it is 
characteristic only of hot weather. But if it is the height 
of summer and the sun is blazing in through the windows, 
permission will be given for ' haloes.' These are the Harrow- 
straw hats, so shallow as to require elastic to keep them 
steady, hung on upside down, in order to shield the back 
of the head and neck. And now the form are in their 
places — with or without their headgear. There will perhaps 
at once come from Edward Bowen the rapid question, 
' Battle to-day ? ' This means that the day is the anni- 
versary of a battle, and he hopes that some one will have 
noted the fact. Or perhaps it is an anniversary which he 
has himself not realised, but which one of the boys has 
thought of, and in that event there will be a call from the 
lad of ' Battle.' The suggestion may or may not be accepted. 
If not, ' there will follow one of those arguments peculiar to 
the form,' and in the end Edward Bowen probably asks 
what battle is meant, and then goes on either to admit with 
mock unwillingness that, though it was (of course) unim- 
portant, such a battle none the less did take place on the 
day, or to deny the accuracy of the authority quoted. And 
now for the lesson itself. If it is ' Latin,' it will not begin 
with Latin. A • Latin ' lesson that begins with Latin, is 
Latin all through, is obviously commonplace. Edward 
Bowen's ' Latin ' lesson begins with the daily papers. What 
is the news ? What are the chief events in current history ? 
The names of one or other of the ministries in power may be 
asked for, and the question is pretty certain to come if there 
has been in France, or elsewhere, a change of ministry. If 
it is a ' French ' lesson there will be the same sort of diver- 
gence from the time-table. A ' French ' lesson is likely for the 



A MEMOIE 213 

first few minutes to mean ' lists.' These will be lists, it may 
be, of the Prime Ministers of this or the last century, or of 
the Presidents of the United States, or of the Archbishops of 
Canterbury (beginning with Cranmer). Another set which 
may be asked for is the Eoman Emperors, another the Hills 
of Borne, another the Electorates of the Empire, another — 
it need hardly be said — the Headmasters of Harrow. 
Another, as Mr. Trevelyan in his paragraphs on the House 
has noted, may be ' The mouths of the Nile.' This last is 
de rigueur, since it is, as Edward Bowen is never tired of 
explaining, essential that every one should possess at least 
one piece of absolutely useless information. The list, what- 
ever it may be, will be rattled off, almost in a single breath, 
by one member or another of the form ; and then those 
who also know it, but have not had the opportunity of 
displaying their knowledge, are called on to ' stand ' — a 
word which in Modern Sixth Form life at Harrow does 
not bear its usual significance, but means to lean a little 
forward over the desk. All those « standing ' then receive a 
mark with the original declaimer. The measure of required 
preparation which has been given to the lesson is very 
quickly tested. Pieces of paper are distributed, and a few 
questions asked, which are to be answered in two or three 
words. These are then collected, and the rest of the time 
will be given not to finding out what the members of the 
form have or have not learned out of school, but to 
teaching and to inspiring them to teach themselves. If 
it is a history lesson to which we are being privileged 
to listen, all books will perhaps soon be put away, and the 
master will fascinate and amuse his audience with a descrip- 
tion of some battle of Napoleon's, or will explain how some 
foreign history works in with the English history on which 
the form is engaged. If he wants to explain the details of 
some fight, tin soldiers will be brought out of his desk — 
• surely,' writes a pupil, ' in no Sixth Form room have tin 
soldiers ever manoeuvred before '—and the various sequences 
of the engagement made clear with their help. Suddenly, 
it may be, the tin soldiers are formed into procession. In 
the rear comes a riderless white horse spotted over with ink, 



214 EDWAED BOWEN 

and without a stand, and with its hoofs bent by force out- 
wards. It is Turenne's funeral. Listen to the explanation 
about the horse. ' You see, Turenne's horse was remarkable 
for having very big feet, and that is the only way we could 
give it big feet.' Or another relic connected with Turenne 
may be produced — ' the tree ' under which he was shot. 
This consisted of one leaf and a piece of bark about an 
inch square, presumably picked up by Edward Bo wen on 
the actual spot and now kept by him in his desk. A similar 
relic, to be produced upon a suitable occasion, is ' the hedge ' 
from Naseby ; it is a twig about eighteen inches long. Or 
let us suppose that we are listening on a Friday evening to 
a French prose lesson. Not an interesting subject as a rule 
but Edward Bowen will make it interesting. First of all 
several short sentences will be translated by the Form on 
paper ; then he will discuss what the translation ought to 
be, then he will talk about French idioms, and lastly there 
will be a longer piece of English to be turned into French. 
An important prize, however, is attached to the correct 
translation of the original sentences. There are only six of 
them, but they are not easy to manipulate, and, as a reward, 
there is offered a six-sided lead pencil bought of the grand- 
son of the only publisher whom the first Napoleon shot (one 
Palm of Nuremberg). This special prize is scarcely ever 
won, not once a term, nor even once a year. Once in a 
generation of boys or thereabouts it is gained, and it is 
unnecessary to dwell on the kudos that attaches to the 
triumphant winner thereof. Perhaps as the lesson — whether 
French prose or history or Latin — goes on, we may be for- 
tunate enough to see ' the goose ' brought into operation. 
This is a great invention, and has been brought direct from 
Spain. On its first arrival it was duly announced — without, 
however, its nature being disclosed — as ' an instrument of 
torture which would be used on anyone who was very 
naughty ; ' and for a considerable time the mysterious threat 
kept the Form almost preternaturally ' good.' If, however, 
there is any scandalous piece of ignorance or any flagrant 
piece of wild guessing, we shall see it emerge from its 
hiding-place ; possibly the boys will themselves call for it. 
It is a small bird, so made that it mechanically wags its 



A MEMOIE 215 

head up and down, and this is pointed towards the offender, 
who has to endure its salute for some moments. But the 
penalty — so severe while it lasts — has its compensations. 
The body of the miniature goose is full of sweetmeats, and 
one of these is always given as a salve to possibly wounded 
feelings. One other experience we may perhaps come 
in for, which will surprise us, accustomed as we are 
to the ordinary teacher with his stiffness and routine. 
There may during the lesson be — apparently a propos of 
nothing in particular — shouts of ' The Drum ! ' The circum- 
stance, however, has its explanation. It is Edward Bowen's 
custom to read to his Form once a term Thackeray's 
' Chronicle of the Drum,' and the cries to which we are 
listening, and to which Edward Bo wen also listens with 
obvious delight, mean that half term has passed and that 
the Form are becoming impatient. If he is pleased with 
their work, he will gratify them, and sacrifice some of the 
lesson to do so. Anyone who knows the ballad — and knew 
him — will realise that it reflects his own two-sided nature : 
on the one hand, his intense interest in all military matters ; 
on the other, his hatred and horror of the spirit of 
militarism. No lines can better express Edward Bowen's 
own summary of the life of Napoleon I. than those which 
bring Thackeray's striking ' Chronicle ' to its close ; no 
stanzas can put more vividly the final lesson which the 
master will have these lads carry away from the contem- 
plation of that terrific career, closed in St. Helena : 

He captured many thousand guns ; 

He wrote ' the great ' before his name ; 
And dying, only left his sons 

The recollection of his shame. 

Though more than half the world was his, 

He died without a rood his own ; 
And borrow'd from his enemies 

Six foot of ground to lie upon. 

He fought a thousand glorious wars, 
And more than half the world was his, 

And somewhere now, in yonder stars, 
Can tell, mayhap, what greatness is. 



216 EDWAKD BOWEN 

As we have been with Edward Bowen in form, we may 
also accompany him to what was a great function in con- 
nection with its members — ' a celebration tea.' This takes 
place at ■ The Grove ' — if fine, on the lawn — the day before 
the Eton and Harrow match. Of course it is the cen- 
tenary or anniversary of something, and the surroundings 
will necessarily depend somewhat on the event of which the 
feast is nominally commemorative. What the event is 
which is to be duly celebrated, has been determined before- 
hand ; and each boy must bring with him some supposed 
relic connected with it, and praise will be meted out in 
proportion to the ingenuity displayed. Let us suppose 
that the year is 1893 ; it is the centenary of the execution 
of Louis XVI. Here come three boys bringing axes, and 
each declaring that his is ' the axe.' The other boys also 
arrive with various trophies, and then Edward Bowen shows 
them a brand new axe lying on a bed of ivy. This he 
gravely assures them is the only genuine article, and sticks 
to it, till some lad observes that all these claims and 
counter-claims labour under one fatal difficulty — Louis 
was guillotined. Notice that the bushes are hung with 
pictures representing, or alleged to represent — which on 
such an afternoon as this is the same thing — the various 
dramatis persona. Then follows the big tea, ending up with 
strawberries and cream, while a large bouquet is provided 
for each boy. In the middle up comes a telegraph mes- 
senger. Edward Bowen has sent a telegram to the Meteoro- 
logical Office to inquire as to the likelihood of a tine day 
on the morrow, and here is the answer. ' These things,' 
wrote a pupil after Edward Bowen's death, in alluding to 
his ways and methods in school, those ways and methods 
at which we have glanced — 

These things seem trivial, but it was through them and others 
like them that the kindness and gaiety which won Mr. Bowen so 
great a power as a master were expressed. The hold which he 
had upon his form was such that on one occasion we actually 
offered to come up to an extra first school on the morning 
of a whole holiday if he would tell us about Wellington's 
Peninsular campaign. He was among the kindest and most 



A MEMOIE 217 

sympathetic of men, and taught us hy the example of his life no 
less than hy his words. It is difficult for an old pupil fairly to 
estimate the work of such a man, or to write down an accurate 
account of the debt which so many owe to him. But it may at 
least be said that for us who were associated with him at Harrow, 
whether in work or play, there can be few dearer or more 
treasured memories than that of the great man whose strong hand 
helped and whose kindly smile encouraged 'yesterday — many 
years ago.' 

Something has been said of Edward Bowen's religious 
influence in ' The Grove ; ' something must also be said of 
it in connection with the members of his Form. The 
Scripture lessons were on Sunday afternoons and Monday 
mornings — the English Bible being read on Sundays 
and the French New Testament on Mondays — and his 
teaching of Scripture made as great an impression on his 
Sixth as his Confirmation lessons upon his House. He was, 
as has been seen, a member of the critical school, and 
Biblical criticism was regularly taught by him. More than 
twenty years ago, and perhaps earlier, the form were learning 
the rudiments of Old Testament analysis, and separating 
Genesis into two documents, for themselves. An old pupil, 
now a very able and well-known Biblical scholar, writes to 
the author of this memoir : 

It was Bowen who first taught me how to study an ancient 
document, how to read two parallel narratives and investigate 
whether they really agreed, or really supplemented one another, or 
really differed. We began, I think, with Kings and Chronicles, 
learning bit by bit how to read the prophets into the history. 
Afterwards we went through Genesis, and learnt in a simple way 
how to discriminate between the sources. It was all new to me, 
and took my breath away at first. But the lesson once learnt 
remained for ever, and to have begun scientific Biblical study 
under a teacher always fearless and always reverent has been to 
me an experience for which I cannot be too thankful. 

But the critical work was not confined to the Old 
Testament alone. The spirit which animated his teaching 
in that department animated it throughout. The ' Pauline ' 
epistles were not all of them, in his judgment, by St. 
Paul ; and they were not all taught by him as coming from 



218 EDWAED BOWEN 

the Apostle's pen. He was extremely careful not to dwell 
unduly upon detail ; and one term he went so far in the other 
direction as to work through all St. Paul's epistles, taking 
one a Sunday, and drawing attention just to its main points, 
and to the outlines of the arguments. His lessons, too, on 
the Apocalypse were very remarkable, and made a great 
impression on some of those who heard them. He scarcely, 
perhaps, kept pace to the end — so far as this particular book 
was concerned — with absolutely the most recent German 
workmanship ; but he knew enough of the ground to clear 
away some of the worst brambles, and he was careful to do 
so. ' The beast ' was Nero ; the book came from the troubles 
of those primitive times, and dealt with the miseries and 
struggles, the agonies and anticipations of the early Chris- 
tians. Throughout his teaching — whether upon the Old 
or the New Testament — there ran the principle that the Bible 
itself was the document. It was this which was to be 
studied, and not opinions about it. This was to be the 
subject-matter ; this was to be the groundwork. In a word, 
his teaching was the translation into lessons for a Sixth 
Form of such a passage as this from the late Professor 
Jowett's memorable article on ' The Interpretation of Scrip- 
ture ' contributed to ' Essays and Eeviews : ' 

Scripture, like other books, has one meaning, which is to be 
gathered from itself without reference to the adaptations of 
Fathers or divines, and without regard to a priori notions about 
its nature and origin. It is to be interpreted like other books, 
with attention to the character of its authors, and the prevailing 
state of civilisation and knowledge, with allowance for peculiari- 
ties of style and language, and modes of thought, and figures of 
speech. Yet not without a sense that as we read there grows 
upon us the witness of God in the world, anticipating in a rude 
and primitive age the truth that was to be, shining more and 
more unto the perfect day in the life of Christ, which again is 
reflected from different points of view in the teaching of His 
Apostles. 



A MEMOIE 219 

The first years at ' The Grove '—the years separating 
Edward Bowen's acceptance of a large house from Dr. Butler's 
resignation — produced three or four more songs. Of these 
the first was ' Larry,' a breezy football song — 'Larry' being 
the football for whom ' kicks are physic ' — written in 1883. 

Who is Larry, and what is his sin ? 

"What has he done to be so discredited ? 
String, and leather, and air within, 

Never an ounce of brains inherited ; 
Up and volley him into the sky ; 
Down he will tumble by-and-by ; 

Flout and flurry him, kick and worry him, 
Doesn't he like a journey high ! 

That is his path, where the swallows roam, 
That is a road that needs no gravelling ; 

Life is dull, if you bide at home ; 
Larry is made of stuff for travelling ! 

Now you may lift him once again, 

Give him a view of park and plain ; 

Flout and flurry him, kick and worry him, 

That is the way to induce a brain ! 

In the same year he wrote • Cats and Dogs ' — a catch 
representing the contending cries at football ; and in 1884 
three more songs. The first of these latter he did not re- 
publish when in 1886 he brought out his Songs in a small 
volume, and it is in consequence not included in the 
Appendices to this memoir ; the second is a bright, clever 
ditty, descriptive of ' Grandpapa's Grandpapa,' who went to 
Harrow in the eighteenth century consumed by ' an un- 
quenchable thirst ' for learning. 

How the buttons on his blue frock shone ! 

How he carolled and he sang, like a bird ! 
And Eodney, the sailor boy, was one, 

And Bruce, who travelled far, was the third. 

' Grandpapa's Grandpapa ' was, it would seem, a frivolous 
young person who had to be kept in check by his more 
serious ten-year-old companion : 



.220 EDWAKD BOWEN 

Then to Kodrtey grandpapa's grandpapa 

Said, ' Eodney, sailor boy, up away ! 
And with marbles, and with tops, fa la la ! 

'Mid the merry folks from town, pass the day.' 
But Eodney, sailor boy, ' No,' said he, 

' Brace tackles, and avast, and alas ! 
No marbles and jollity for me ; 

I have got to beat the French and De Grasse ! ' 

The third song had for its themes two of the most 
famous names in the history of Harrow — Byron and Peel. 
There is in the cemetery of the parish church a grave upon 
which Byron, when a lad at the school, used to lie and 
meditate and watch the beautiful expanse of country 
which spread itself out before his eyes. In the old school- 
room — the ' Fourth Form Boom,' as it is commonly called 
— there are panels round the walls with the names of 
boys carved upon them, sometimes by the expert fingers of 
the professional workman, sometimes by the unpractised 
hands of the lads themselves. Among these latter is the 
name ' Peel.' It is on these two circumstances that the 
song is based. Byron is found 

Dreaming poetry, all alone, 
Up-a-top of the Peachey stone, 

from which bliss he is disturbed by the entrance of the 
angry Headmaster, who ' sets him grammar and Virgil due.' 
Peel is found 

Just by the name in the carven wood, 

Reading rapidly, all at ease, 

Pages out of Demosthenes. 

The two boys were absolutely different from one another. 
Peel could never have written poetry : Byron could never have 
construed his Demosthenes ; while they both differed equally 
widely from the ordinary athletic member of the community, 
who could only explain their existence by remembering 
that 

Even a goose's brain has uses. 

They were separate, too, in their subsequent careers and 
in their deaths, but it is well that Harrow should alwavs be 



A MEM01K 221 

broad and liberal enough to include within its pale characters 
and temperaments so diverse as theirs : 

Byron lay, solemnly lay, 
Dying for freedom, far away : 
Peel stood up on the famous floor, 
Buled the people, and fed the poor ; 
None so narrow the range of Harrow; 

Welcome poet and statesman too ; 

Doer and dreamer, dreamer, dreamer, 

Doer and dreamer, dream and do ! 

Next year came ' St. Joles,' whose career of scholastic 
usefulness, so long as it lasted unchecked, fell in the earlier 
part of the seventeenth century : 

When time was young and the school was new 

(King James had painted it bright and blue), 

In sport or study, in grief or joy, 

St. Joles was the friend of the lazy boy. 

He helped when the lesson at noon was said, 

He helped when the Bishop was fast in bed ; 

For the Bishop of course was master then, 

And bishops get up at the stroke of ten. 

St. Joles hooray, and St. Joles hooroo, 
Mark my word if it don't come true ; 
In sport or study, in grief or joy, 
St. Joles is the friend of the lazy boy. 

It was, too, about this time that he wrote a dainty little 
song, which he published in his collected verses, but which, 
for some reason or other, was never set to music. It 
is called ' Sober Dick,' and it deals with a lad's waking 
dreams : 

What sober Dicky sees, 

When all aglow 
Fire lights the winter nights, 

Boys only know. 
Out, gas — no soul it has — 
Out lamp and wick ; 
In the embers, ruddily gilt, 
Wonderful things are often built ; 
Sober Dicky can see them all, sober Dick ! 



222 EDWAED BOWEN 

First there is in those embers the shape of a famous 
cricket ground, and ' coals applaud with a coaly cry ' the 
player of a big innings — ' Sober Dicky it surely is, sober 
Dick ! ' Then in the firelight there glows, not Lord's, but 
the House of Commons. Many historic men are there, but 
one face under a great wig stands out from all others 
between the bars : 

Mr. Speaker is made of coal, 

Yet you will think it wondrous droll, 

Like to sober Dicky he is, sober Dick ! 

But at last the fire burns out, and with it all the faces and 
forms that the dreamer has seen therein : 

When coals are dark and dead, 

All burnt to dust, 
Sink, light, and turn to night — 

So Fancy must ! 
Warm flame, vision of Fame, 
Fades passing quick ; 
Was the coal a teller of truth ? 
Does imagining poison youth ? 
Sober Dicky is dreaming now, sober Dick ! 



In 1884 Edward Bowen read to the U.U.'s — that is, as 
was explained earlier in this memoir, ' the United Ushers,' a 
society of assistant masters — a very brilliant and amusing 
paper on ' Games,' which was afterwards published in the 
' Journal of Education.' No master, of course, was better 
qualified to write upon the subject, and certainly no master 
could feel more strongly upon it. The paper is brimming over 
with fun, but it should be carefully remembered in reading 
it that the fun is the veil and not the substance. Beneath 
all the levity there runs a steady purpose — the advocacy of 
athleticism as the most important and valuable of all the 
factors making up our educational system. The essay is a 
resolute — each reader must determine for himself how far it 



A MEMOIE 223 

is a successful — defence of the prominence assigned to cricket 
and football in public school life ; but it may perhaps be of 
yet wider service. Games are the same for the youth of every 
social grade ; if they mean so much at Harrow, need they 
mean less for Whitechapel or Southwark ? If they are in 
our public schools a great power making for moral as well 
as physical betterment, is not their development in, con- 
nection with elementary education a matter of supreme 
importance, in order that here also their influence for good 
— their incomparable influence according to Edward Bowen 
— may have a full and fair opportunity of making itself 
felt ? The essay sets out with a suggestion that one familiar 
dictum has a less sufficient basis upon which to rest than is 
commonly assumed : 

I have often been told that the mind is superior to the body ; 
I do not think this has ever been proved. It seems to me to be 
of the nature of those things which are called pious beliefs. As a 
rough test, let us think what it is that we most value our friends 
for : is it for their delicate choice in optatives, which my friend 
the composition-master assures me is the loftiest mental develop- 
ment which we can put before our youth ; or is it their temper — 
in other words, their digestion — which is their body ? . . . Tom 
Hughes says somewhere that your real friend is the man whom, 
if you saw alone and penniless and naked in the street among the 
carriages, you would take, and dress and feed and be a brother to. 
Well, everyone knows you wouldn't if he had a decided squint. 
Anyhow, you wouldn't merely because you knew he was clever. 
How is it practically with us ? I certainly don't think I have any 
one really very ugly friend (I smile to myself as I write this, to 
think how when I read it I shall see every one furtively glancing at 
his neighbour to see if he is looking at him). I repeat, I haven't 
any very ugly friend. And, on the other hand, I must say of some 
of my friends, with all respect, that their minds and intelligences 
are at any rate no better than they should be. 

I begin by the proposition that the common English school 
games are of indescribable value. Without any exaggeration, I 
declare that in our whole system there is nothing which, in my 
opinion, approaches them in value. I merely mention that the 
battle of Waterloo was won in the playing fields of Eton, because 



224 EDWAED BOWEN 

that remark will have been generally expected, and it will now not 
be necessary to make it again. But I have no objection to add to 
it, that the existence of the playing fields at Eton has been much 
more to the advantage of the world than the winning of the battle 
of Waterloo. 

The essayist then goes on to urge — the same dazzle of 
humour being on almost every sentence — that games give an 
immense amount of pleasure, that the social gain involved 
in them is incalculable, that they develop the organising 
faculty, that they instil temper, dignity, courtesy. 

Once more, I offer it as my deliberate opinion, that the best 
boys are, on the whole, the players of games. I had rather 
regenerate England with the football elevens than with average 
members of Parliament, who are, of course, our wisest men. When 
I reflect on the vices to which games are a permanent corrective — 
laziness, foppery, man-of-the-worldness — I am not surprised at 
being led to the verdict which I have just delivered. And, having 
known more than one period, at one school at any rate, when 
cricket was distinctly recognised as being on one side, and very 
serious evils on the other, I find a cricket ball or a football be- 
coming in my eyes a sort of social fetish, of which it is difficult to 
realise the fact that our ancestors never dreamt the value. 

The writer goes on to ask whether games do not minister 
to that ' purity of heart,' to that simple-mindedness, of which 
the Sermon on the Mount speaks, and to which so great a 
recompense is promised ; and he adds : 

When you have a lot of human beings, in highest social union 
and perfect organic action, developing the law of their race and 
falling in unconsciously with its best inherited traditions of brother- 
hood and of common action, I think you are not far from getting 
a glimpse of one side of the highest good. There lives more soul 
in honest play, believe me, than in half the hymn-books. 

The essay subsequently discusses the interference of 
masters in the school games. Such interference is desirable 
up to a point. It should be exercised to 'regulate with despotic 
control the conditions under which a game shall turn into a 
public exhibition,' or to check extravagance — ' a master does 
not do his duty to his games who does not enact how much 



A MEMOIE 225 

shall be paid to cricket professionals, within what limits 
the tailor and hosier may have their fling, what shall be the 
maximum value of cups given as prizes ' — to watch against 
abuses of the compulsory system, to make laws for purposes 
of health. On the other hand, ' masters should not teach 
boys to do what they can do for themselves ; and self- 
organisation we all allow to be half the good of the play-.' As 
regards joining in the games, a master should only do so on 
two conditions : (1) That the boys welcome him ; (2) that 
he can keep his temper. The athletic master can easily be 
wrecked on such rocks as excessive partisanship, roughness, 
self-assertiveness, selfishness. It is useless for him to join 
in the games unless he can do so ' genially, modestly, good- 
temperedly.' As regards swearing on the cricket or football 
field — if ' in the middle of a game we hear some young St. 
Athanasius making a characteristic remark ' — it is ridiculous 
and hypocritical to be shocked. The master should behave 
just as he would wish one of the upper boys to behave. He 
may get an opportunity of angry remonstrance then and 
there, or he may afterwards find a moment to take the 
culprit to task, ' and, if he is a big boy, to take him to a good 
deal of task.' The closing paragraph of his essay as it is 
printed — Edward Bowen appended a note that its real con- 
clusion was suppressed ' as being frivolous ' — is expressive 
of his intense dislike, to which some reference has already 
been made, of the gymnasium. 

There it is ; it exists. It is recommended by no scientific 
authorities of repute ; it appeals to no traditions of past enjoy- 
ment ; it awakens no social interests, and trains no administrative 
faculties. It is the mere Greek Iambics of physical training ; has 
its element of truth, as all pedantry has, and has in its physical 
results a certain poor degree, as all pedantry has, of success. But 
what a substitute for football, and what a reflection for us, that 
men who know and have tasted the powers and the pleasures of 
play should yet in cold blood drive the children into this dead and 
barren routine ! Don't suppose that great traditions can be 
trampled on with impunity. How do we know that the school 
games are so immovably fixed in school life that the meddlesome 
intrusion of formal gymnastics may not in some degree blight 



226 F,P\YARD BOWTCN 

and spoil them? . . . Wo must not exaggerate : it will take a good 

deal of authoritative gymnastics to spoil cricket; but 1 do feel, 
towards anything' which goes in its influence against the games of 
which we are so proud, a jealousy and an aversion which almost 
make me blind to its merits. 

John Farmer had, as already stated, left Harrow with 
Dr. Butler in 1885, and Edward Bowen did not write many 
songs afterwards, while after 1889 — so far as School songs 
were concerned— ho ceased writing altogether. In 1SS7 came 
' Awake,' a merry set of verses inciting to what is frequently 
unpopular both at school and in after-life -getting up : 

The wind blew o'er the plain, and cried, 

Awake, boys, awake ! 
The best of the day is the morning tide, 

Awake, boys, awake ! 
With a plunge and a rush to the air, the air, 
And safe in the school, with a chime to spare, 
And who. if it freeze with winter breeze, 
Is half a coward enough to care ? 

Or grieve if he, in his ardour bold, 
Or even his master, catches cold ? 

So awake, boys, awake ! 

The joys of the morning take ! 
They sleep in the city, and mere's the pity, 

But you on the hills, awake ! 

The same year brought a cricketing song, • The Niner ' — 
descriptive of the heroic efforts of a batsman — 

Of Cricketers never a finer, 

From Nottinghamshire to China — 

to make nine runs off one hit, and of the tragic fate in which 
those efforts finally terminated. The next year there were 
three more songs — the first some lines on the match at Lord's 
— ' A Gentleman 's a-Bowling ' — and dedicated to Mr. F. S. 
Jackson, whose bowling had won the game : the second a 
boisterous football song, ' Plump a Lump ; ' and the third 
'Tom.' This last is scarcely appreciated upon a merely 
slight acquaintance, but a sense of its merits grows 
upon its friends with closer knowledge. It should perhaps 



A MEMOIB 227 

be read with the light upon it:: line:: of the sentiment to 
which Edward Bowen gave expression in the essay on 
'Games' that he would sooner undertake the task of 
regenerating England with the football elevens than with 
average members of Parliament : 

Nov/ that the mutches are near, 

Struggle, and terror, and bliss, 
Which is the House of the year? 
Who is the hero of this ? 
Tow ! 

Tom, who with valour and skill, too, 

Spite of the wind and the hill, too, 
Takes it along sudden and strong, 

Going where Torn hoe a v/ill to; 

And so let us set up a cheer, 0, 

That Jaffa and Joppa can hear, 0, 

Arid if a hurrah can v/aken the Shah, 

Why, then, let us v/aken him, singing, Hurrah ! 

Some, who their f louses enthrone, 

Best, when the victory comes; 
Who v/ill go on till his own 
Boasts an eleven of Toms? 
Torn ! 
Tom, who in cloud and in clear, too, 
Goes with the lads he is dear to ; 

Is it a dream ? There is the team ; 
Tom may be real, and here, too ! 
And so let us, &c. 

In 3 889 came the last of the School songs — ' the only 
song throughout which a slight vein of sadness runs' — 'If 
Time is up.' It is certainly one of his most beautiful 
compositions, and is characterised by a grace and charm 
that none can miss. 

If time is up and lesson is due, and youth has got to learn, 
I creep to School, if needs must be, and masters soft and stern ; 
And one will give me good marks, and one will give rne had, 
And one will give me nothing at all for all the pains I had ; 
But good come, bad come, for what you must you can, 
And heigh-ho, follow the game, till boy shall grow to man. 

a 2 



228 EDWAED BOWEN 

They glide, the months of worry and work, of desk and floor and 

grass, 
And till you trust them, fright the soul, and as you trust them, 

pass; 
And one will bring me bright days, and one will bring me dull, 
And one will bring me trouble enough, till all the days are full ; 
But bright come, dull come, they came the same before, 
And heigh-ho, follow the game, and show the way to more. 

Edward Bowen still brought out now and again those 
songs for his House which helped along his annual House 
suppers, and in 1897 he wrote, in response to Mr. Farmer's 
urgent solicitation, the words of a song for old Harrovians, 
which, however, is not in the Harrow collection, and may 
not be used by boys still in the School. It is only for those 

whose — 

Firelight dreams still summon from afar 

Play's hot battle, ebb and flow ; 
Hearts made one in the flush of mimic war, 
Yesterday — many years ago ! 

It was right and fitting that the last verse of it should 
contain its benison on Harrow and upon those there — 
the last verse of the last song which he ever published. 

All good things of the heaven and the earth, 

Drop soft blessing on the hill ! 
Crown fair youth with her heritage of mirth, 

Weak souls quicken into will ! 
Years, bear gaily the trophies you have won, 

Strong life bringing, as you go ; 
Shine, bright suns, shine happy as you shone 

Yesterday — many years ago ! 

It is, of course, upon Edward Bowen's School songs that 
his reputation as a writer will always rest ; but there are 
verses as well which are more than noteworthy. The most 
exquisite set of all — ' Shemuel ' — have already been noticed. 
Some other lines are on 'P. L. C.,' a boy who had died 
suddenly a few days after leaving the School ; while ' An 
Episode of Balaclava ' is commemorative of a forgotten 
event — an event not mentioned even by Kinglake — in that 
celebrated charge which was both led by an old Harrovian 



A MEMOIR 229 

and received its last touch of romance from an old Harrovian. 
There are too some very beautiful memorial verses on ' E. G.' 
(Eobert Grimston), and others scarcely less beautiful on 
' F. P.' (Frederick Ponsonby, Lord Bessborough), to both of 
whom Harrow cricket was so deeply indebted for many years. 1 
Never perhaps has a more touching tribute been offered to 
the memory of a great cricketer than the lines on -Robert 
Grimston : 

Still the balls ring upon the sun-lit grass, 

Still the big elms, deep shadowed, watch the play ; 

And ordered game and loyal conflict pass 
The hours of May. 

But the game's guardian, mute, nor heeding more 
What suns may gladden, and what airs may blow, 

Friend, teacher, playmate, helper, counsellor, 
Lies resting now. 

Well played. His life was honester than ours ; 

We scheme, he worked ; we hesitate, he spoke ; 
His rough-hewn stem held no concealing flowers, 

But grain of oak. 

No earthly umpire speaks, his grave above ; 

And thanks are dumb, and praise is all too late ; 
That worth and truth, that manhood and that love 

Are hid, and wait. 



In later years the holidays brought no such exciting 
experiences as those of 1870 and 1871; but they had a 
quiet interest of their own, and it is unfortunate that there 

1 Theirs may not have been strictly called eventful lives, but they were 
eventful in the annals of the School to which they were so deeply attached. 
Their place it will be impossible to fill ; their memory is enshrined in the 
hearts of Harrow boys. They were men of honour ; they were men of truth ; 
they resented a mean action ; they abhorred a false word ; and, owing to their 
high character, exercised an influence among the boys, abiding in its nature 
and unique in its kind. — E. Chandos-Leigh. 



230 EDWAED BOWEN 

has been preserved no record by himself of such a tour as 
that which he took in 1891 with Mr. Charles Colbeck — one 
of his colleagues and most intimate friends — in Bohemia. It 
was a battle-field tour — Eger, Prague, Kollin, Koniggratz, 
Eiesengebirge, Austerlitz, Brimn, Vienna, Lobau, Wagram, 
Hohenlinden — and it was just such a tour as his heart loved. 
He began, however, to find about this time that it was de- 
sirable that he should spend some of the winter away from 
England, and though he did not go to the Eiviera every year, 
he would do so, if possible, biennially. On other occa- 
sions he would go a tricycling — or when the modern 
' safety ' had come in, a bicyling — tour in England, and 
these tours were duly chronicled on the celebrated map, only 
in dotted and not full lines. At the termination of one such 
circuit he addressed these lines ' Jacobo Bryce, S.T.P.,' x who 
had been his companion : 

Suave, bicyclantis vento minuente laborem, 

Leniter undantem corripuisse viam ; 
Et (nisi zinziberi succos caupona recuset) 

Trans quot habet campos Anglia nostra vehi. 
Seu per acervatos lapides, aut pulvere mollis 

Fit via, punctura prsepediente rotas, 
Cogeris et, veteris fracta compagine currus, 

Nunc eques alterna nunc pedes ire vice ; 
Seu deus, eloquio gaudens, quo Curia gaudet, 

Alipes inceptum rite secundat iter. 
Sed nobis positi tandem stat terminus oti ; 

Musa redux pueros ad pia pensa vocat. 
Discendse Eegum series, nee amabilis ordo 

Paparum, et Corsi proelia mille viri. 
Lusimus ; occubuit perdrix, cessitque tonanti ; 

Dura nimis teneros lsesit Ierna pedes. 
Bos-que Fabri tenuit domus, et Northumbricus imber, 

Helvellynque Eubras mons ubi celat aquas. 
Consedi demum fessus. Pit Lucus asylon 

Sontibus. Hie tutus tu quoque, Joe, fores ! 
At tu, qui te jam desiderat, addere lecto ; 

Detque elegis finem 2 charta repleta. Vale. 

1 The Bight Hon. James Bryce, D.C.L. M P. 
* Another copy has, * Me vetat extendi.' 



A MEMOIE 231 

In the last ten years (1891 to 1901) of his life he was 
more frequently present than ever upon the cricket or 
football field, though cricket he now actually played but 
rarely. In football, however, he took a share till within six 
weeks of his death, though he was, of course, no longer the 
antagonist he formerly had been. But on one occasion — a 
somewhat memorable one — he showed all his old power and 
vigour. It was in 1894 or 1895, when he was fifty-eight or 
fifty-nine years old. The Harrow masters were playing the 
Eton masters at Harrow, with half the School looking on. 
Eton were the better side, and with ten minutes left the score 
was one goal each. The Harrow masters were very hard 
pressed, and the brunt of the game fell upon the backs, among 
whom was Edward Bowen. He seemed to feel that by a 
supreme effort he might save the game ; he threw himself 
completely into it, became as aggressive in attack as he was 
brilliant in defence — and did save the game. The enthusiasm 
among the boys can be better imagined than described. 

During these years his influence and his reputation 
were at their height. The School was alive to his devotion, 
and responded to it with loyalty to him and pride in him. 
His greatness, too, was recognised outside ; he had made for 
himself a splendid name in the educational world. His col- 
leagues felt that they had in him one whose supremacy in 
all matters connected with public school life was beyond 
question, and his experience and judgment were always at 
their disposal. At the same time he was to some extent 
becoming a recluse, and was living a more and more isolated 
life. His fellow-workers, unless they sought him out, did not 
see much of him, and many of the younger masters felt 
at times something akin to irritation that they did not see 
more. 'He was very kind,' writes one of them, 'if you 
went to consult him ; but it required an effort to go where 
you were never invited, and one hesitated to trespass on 
his time unless one had some very definite question to 
ask or some difficulty to lay before him.' At masters' 
meetings he would constantly speak, though the influence 
of his speeches was at times diminished through the fact 
that he became — as another colleague has said — ' almost 



232 EDWAED BOWEN 

Gladstonian often in the guarded circumlocution of his 
phrases.' His quickness to mark distinctions and to note 
difficulties that had been overlooked by others was very 
striking, and he could when he really desired to carry any par- 
ticular point be wonderfully persuasive ; but, on the whole, 
he was ceasing somewhat to be constructive and becoming- 
critical. A master — one of the two just quoted — writes : 

The more I saw of him under these circumstances, the more I 
became convinced that his not having become a headmaster was 
a great loss to English education, and to a certain extent a loss to 
his own character. In a position of authority, with full scope for 
exerting his own influence over his colleagues, with his many ideas 
and ideals, and his wonderful fertility of resource, kindled and 
steadied by the sense of heavy responsibility, with his exquisite 
taste in classical scholarship and his enthusiasm for history and 
modern subjects, I believe he would have done much to guide our 
public school education in the transition from a purely classical to 
a modern system, in which we seem to flounder forward with little 
definite notion of what we want, and to be in danger of sacrificing 
the old way without getting the gain of the new. . . . 

I felt most strongly, as I watched him, and have often thought 
since, that this was what he was made for — to have the weight on 
his own shoulders rather than to judge how another carried it — 
and that the development of the critical faculty, which was his 
weakness, was due to the fact that even his devoted labours for his 
House and for the School were insufficient to absorb the immense 
fund of energy he possessed. 

This may, perhaps, be condemned as an idle speculation. 
Bowen could not have borne to leave Harrow to become a head- 
master elsewhere ; and in 1885, when Dr. Butler resigned, he was 
not appointed. He served to the end in the lower place — 

' He did God's will — to him all one 
If on the earth or in the sun.' 

Edward Bowen, however, would spare neither time nor 
pains to advise and help a colleague who was in real per- 
plexity. In November 1892 a young master came to him to 
seek his counsel in connection with one of the most serious 
troubles which ever darken school-life. The outcome of the 
consultation was a remarkable letter which was afterwards 
published anonymously in 'The Journal of Education,' but 



A MEMOIE 233 

of which there seems no need to conceal any longer the 
real authorship. It will probably be regarded as the locus 
classicus upon an extremely difficult and painful subject : 

THE LIMITS OF CONFIDENTIAL EELATIONS 
WITH BOYS 

I was thinking, after you left me yesterday, of the general con- 
ditions on which we invite the confidence of boys. It is an old 
subject — at any rate appears old to me — but it is so full of variety 
and difficulty that it seems always to be inviting fresh reflection. 

There are certain clear and visible dangers — which the wise man 
may avoid more or less, but which are still dangers to everyone 
(I include you for argument's sake, if for no other reason, as 
among the wise men, and am writing generally) — and also certain 
limitations. 

The only attitude in which we can properly invite confidence 
on any matter very personal and private is that of a friend. That 
much I am clear about; but of what follows I am less clear. 
Does it not follow, however, that I ought never to get a boy to 
speak to me of his personal history for his own sake ? I am going 
beyond this if I do so, partly for his own sake, and partly in order 
that I may know what will help me to deal with others. I must 
never try to make my own or other people's profit out of what he 
says to me. If it comes, well and good ; but it ought not in any 
degree to be my object. 

This does not exclude my consulting with any boy for the 
common welfare, and receiving any confidence given for that 
purpose. This is a different relation altogether ; it can exist at 
the same time as others, but is perfectly separable. 

Of course, confidence received in both senses is absolutely 
sacred. But this does not bar my acting on it in any way in which 
the boy gives me leave to act, or in which I am sure that he would 
be willing that I should use it. This last looks a dangerous 
amplification, but I am assuming that I am wise and good. 

Also I ought not to take advantage of my position to urge him, 
beyond the limits of a moderate pressure, to give leave for such 
action. 

Lastly, on this particular head, my relation, as friend and 
nothing more, involves certain limitations and reticences as to 
what is actually said. A person who unbosoms himself to a 
friend, for his own good, will naturally speak of his own faults in 
general terms, and not in detail, and he will only enter on the 



234 EDWAED BOWEN 

latter in case he expects to receive specific advice and help, which, 
in fact, the wise friend can give, very often at any rate, without 
the unbosoming. 

But, one may say to oneself, although the only confidential 
relation is the friendly one, is not this, in some cases, coloured, 
and does it not naturally take a slightly different line, from the 
relation of boy and master ? Yes ; but the ethics of this relation 
are comparatively easy. A boy cannot forget, and there is no 
reason why he should, that the person talking to him is a superior 
in several ways ; and there are only two considerations which are 
important (besides the obvious ones) in this relation : one, that a 
master has a duty to the school, and must hesitate before he puts 
himself in any position, with regard to a boy, which will impair 
his power of acting as a master should necessity arise ; and the 
other, that he is likely to spoil the good that he does, if he is com- 
monly known as a receiver of confidences of the special kind of 
which we are thinking. The idea may become too common, and 
the conception of the importance and seriousness of such excep- 
tional intercourse may be impaired. If I were asked whether I 
can remember instances where this result seemed to have followed, 
I should say, with regret, that I think I can. There is even the 
further possibility that a boy who is expecting detection may con- 
ceive the idea of forestalling it, and partly securing himself, by 
means of a private confidence. 

So far then, and with these limitations, we shall probably 
agree that a master who admits, and even invites, the confidence 
of boys, may do a very great amount of useful work, and give help 
of sometimes untold value. If he is foolish or perverse in the way 
in which he sets about it, so he may be in other matters. We are 
taking his good sense for granted ; and all the reserves and limita- 
tions which we are calling up are really only a measure of the 
degree in which every schoolmaster must have his thoughts and 
recollections filled with instances where fragile characters of boys 
have been indebted to the help of stronger and friendly advisers. 

But I cannot help thinking that there are two other dangers in 
the way of the confidential intercourse in question, both more 
subtle, but not less important than the others. One of them is 
the danger to the boy of being enfeebled and demoralised by his 
own act of confession. This is clearly possible ; the most ex- 
perienced of us can but make a guess as to the extent of its 
probability. The mere putting a thing into words, the mere com- 
munication of it to another, involves just a certain familiarisation 
with it, and the more one can keep bad things out of mind the 



A MEMOIE 235 

better. An act of repentance ought, I should think, to be 
vivid and eager, not brooding. The best thing that we can do 
with our sins is to forget them. That one ought to reflect much 
on one's past offences, and ought to take careful pains to be on 
one's guard against them, are two common maxims of the pulpit ; 
but they seem to me both wrong. However this may be, it 
can hardly be doubted that repeated disclosure of wrong-doing, 
habitual recurrence to the counsel of another, must — whether it 
has a good side or not — have the weak side of impairing the 
delicacy of conscience, and must prevent the formation of self- 
confidence and firmness. It is so very easy for a boy to fancy 
that, when he has done wrong and confessed it, things are pretty 
much as they were before. Grant that he wants help ; but is that 
help necessarily best given by one who completely knows all his 
frailty? 

The other danger is from the point of view of the master ; but 
it may be much more real to some people than to others, and to 
some may be hardly a danger at all. I have often thought that 
the craving for influence, especially for spiritual influence, is one 
of the chief ' temptations,' ' snares,' of our profession. Moral 
strength is like physical strength, a thing that we may be glad to 
possess, but we have no right to be always wanting to use it on 
weaker people. At any rate, it is possible that the wish to do so 
may betray us into situations in which we shall be thinking much of 
our own mastery and action, and less of the development of power 
and will in the other person. That virtue should triumph ought 
to be every one's wish ; but if a man mentally adds the intense 
desire that it should be under his own leadership and auspices, he 
is introducing a wrong note into the music. Possibly you may 
not feel conscious of this morbid element mixing with healthy 
energy, but I am sure some people must. 

Please make allowances for the style of this letter. I wish 
I knew some way of writing in haste, and under much other 
pressure, without seeming dogmatic and didactic. 



In July 1894, Edward Bowen gave evidence before the 
Koyal Commission on Secondary Education, appointed by 
Lord Kosebery's Government, and presided over by his old 
friend Mr. Bryce (at the time President of the Board of 
Trade). Edward Bo wen's examination took up the whole of 



236 EDWAED BOWEN 

one sitting, and was principally concerned with the question 
of the supervision of secondary schools by some external 
authority, and with the urgent desire which many of his 
profession felt, but which he did not at all share, for the 
systematic training of teachers. Upon this latter subject he 
appeared, he said, to play the part of advocatus diaboli. He 
did, indeed, say something of his views upon the age at which 
boys should leave school for the University — views which 
have already been touched on, and upon which (as has been 
seen) he largely acted in connection with his own House. 
He took care, also, in answer to a chance question, to express 
his own strong appreciation of the value of athletics, and 
his earnest hope that they would not be forced back into a 
less important place than that now held by them in public 
school life. But it was these other two questions which 
formed, so to speak, the main planks in the platform of his 
evidence. 1 His objection to the supervision of secondary 
schools by some external authority was mainly due to his 
anxiety lest a control or semi-control of that sort should 
have a cramping influence upon the curriculum. He did 
not attribute any serious practical inconvenience to the 
existing multiplicity of the examinations for admission to 
the various professions ; nor did he consider that a general 
Abiturienten-Examen was worth the very large financial 
price that would have to be paid for it. Of such examina- 
tions as there were he had no great complaint to make, 
though he distinctly preferred the Civil Service Commis- 
sioners' examinations to those of the Joint Board of Oxford 
and Cambridge. The former were, in his judgment, more 
carefully adapted to the various standards required, and the 
papers were better composed. Outside inspection or super- 
vision of any kind carried with it, in his opinion — so far 
as the great public schools were concerned — an element of 
peril which distinctly outweighed any possible advantages. 
He did not discuss the requirements of efficiency in other 
schools, e.g. schools in receipt of a Government grant ; but 
he considered that schools such as Eton, Harrow, Bugby, 

1 The greater part of his evidence will be found in the Appendices of thi6 
volume. 



A MEMOIR 237 

and Winchester, were continuously subject to an informal 
inspection, which was at least as effective as any formal 
one could be — he meant, of course, the interest and watch- 
fulness both of the general public and of the particular 
clientele of the school. Centralisation was destructive of 
elasticity, and he referred, in illustration, to the legend of 
the French Minister of Education, who pulled out ^his 
watch in the presence of a friend, and remarked that all 
the children throughout the country were at that moment 
engaged on one particular study. ' I believe the Com- 
mission has before it the original author,' he observed. 
' I invented that story some thirty years ago.' His evidence 
on the training of teachers was even more emphatic and un- 
compromising. He was, to some slight extent, 'heckled' 
upon the matter by one or two Commissioners who were 
clearly disposed to differ from him ; but he never changed his 
position. His argument was, in effect, this : It is not going 
much too far to say that nothing but inherent character 
can produce good teaching, and such character is obviously 
independent of anything that a training college, as such, 
can do for a man. It is, of course, true that the giving 
of instruction is part of a master's calling; but, though 
always important in itself, its importance varies. Some- 
times, as in day-schools, it may assume not only very large, 
but obviously preponderant proportions ; but in secondary 
boarding-schools — especially in the great public schools — 
its value is much less. In these the imparting instruction 
is not nearly so important as all that part of a master's 
work which lies outside and beyond it. What, therefore — 
so far as schools of this kind are concerned — the training 
of teachers can hope to do at most is to deal with the 
smallest part of a master's duties — the part which may be 
spoken of as • pedagogy.' No doubt a man has a good deal 
to learn in this section of his duties, but you cannot teach 
him much except by subjecting him to actual experience. 
In other words, you cannot train him to be a teacher except 
by making him a teacher. What little training you can 
otherwise impart could be given in a fortnight. There are 
a few hints to be offered, a few cautions to be impressed, a 



238 EDWAED BOWEN 

few general rules to be taught, some books to be read. It is 
no doubt a fact that, in the case of elementary schoolmasters, 
training colleges do much to prepare candidates for the 
profession ; but their work is, to a very great extent, that 
of universities. The students continue their own education 
there. The colleges impart knowledge, but the work they 
do in actual training for the pedagogic side of a master's 
career is comparatively small. Again, if the training of 
teachers is universally to be taken up, and if no teacher is 
to be employed who has not been trained, the expenditure of 
time and money involved in so drastic a proposal must also 
be taken into consideration. A man could not well go to 
one of these colleges for less than six months, and the 
maintenance of himself there would mean six months extra 
in preparation for his life, and six months less in his 
period of wage earning. The number of masters to be 
trained would be immense, and altogether the cost would 
be heavier than was fair and reasonable, and heavier than 
the profession — which consisted on the whole of poor men, 
who had to make their own way in the world — could bear. 
And even if the price were paid, the gain would be com- 
paratively small, though larger in the case of some than 
others, in proportion as pedagogy was or was not to form 
the chief part in their subsequent duties. Master and 
pedagogue, it must be remembered, were not convertible 
terms. A man might be a skilful pedagogue but a very bad 
master ; while the important thing was that he should be a 
good master. ' A bad man teaching history well is a far 
worse thing than a good man teaching history badly.' A 
master's work will, on the whole, be excellent or inferior as 
his own personal qualities are excellent or inferior. 

In 1897 — three years after this evidence — he wrote 
another and his last essay for the ' U.U.'s.' 1 He took as his 
subject one of those mistaken ideals of schoolmastering 
which he considered to be due in part to the influence of 
Arnold of Eugby. Of Arnold, Edward Bowen was never an 
unqualified admirer. ' In the picture of Arnold himself as 

1 The essay was published in the Journal of Education for April 1897, and 
will be found among the Appendices. 



A MEMOIE 239 

he is drawn for us, there are features which further experi- 
ence, if we had the creation of a new Arnold in our hands, 
would lead us to modify.' And in this paper, it is the weak 
points in a bad imitator of Arnold, or rather the mistakes 
in an imitator of the weak points of Arnold, that are 
brought up to the surface and good-humouredly satirised. 
Its title is ' Arnoldides Chiffers ; or, the Attitude of 'the 
Schoolmaster ; ' and Mr. Chiffers is, as his Christian name 
would imply, a disciple of the famous Eugbeian. He is re- 
presented as having achieved much distinction in his pro- 
fessional career, and on his decease his life was duly written. 
Here is the summary of his character as his biographer saw 
and admired it : 

No one ever left the school without bearing the impress of his 
striking personality. His rule was inflexible, but just. He would 
sink, indeed, the master, and become a boy himself among boys ; 
he would seek at times the popularity that flowed from his joining 
personally in their games ; but he could resume on occasion a 
dignity which would tolerate no compromise. Caring for nothing 
in the world but the success of the institution which he helped to 
govern, he regarded its fame as the first of objects, and its very 
cricket matches as tests of its welfare. Work with him was work, 
and play was play. No lounging or smiling before the desk of 
such a teacher ; every pupil feared him while at class, but, the 
lesson over, had nothing to fear. Lavish in rewarding excellence, 
he never passed over a fault. Schoolboy errors, indeed, he saw 
with the eye of a schoolboy, unless they trenched on what to 
him was sacred ground — study, order, the majesty of work ; and 
he hated above all things, in a growing mind, slackness and in- 
attention and frivolity. As the ' Times ' writer said of Dr. Benson 
at Wellington, it was a treat to see the zealous satisfaction 
with which he chastised the boy found out in a lie. In a word, he 
studied day by day to bring his own moral influence to bear on 
the characters of those entrusted to him, he made his approval 
their standard, and taught them to regard one another, not from 
the point of view of fleeting popularity or schoolboy honour or 
social gifts, but from the eternal point of view of right and 
wrong. 

Such are the features of the imaginary — or perhaps not 
altogether imaginary — schoolmaster upon which Edward 



240 EDWAED BOWEN 

Bowen proceeds to comment in detail. ' Arnoldides ' and his 
methods are subjected to a raking criticism, and through the 
gauze of the criticism is to be seen Edward Bo wen's truer 
conception of a first-rate schoolmaster. Mr. Chiffers was 
wholly wrong in thus separating work from amusement. 
Grave and gay are bound together in ' a natural and fruitful 
marriage.' What reason, what justification, was there for 
this violent divorce ? Of course quadratic equations cannot 
be brought into football — in an hour's game there is not 
time for them. But there can be, and is, introduced into 
football and all honest athletics what gives the value to all 
good work — ' systematic effort, conscious progress, deliberate 
ambition to be better to-morrow than to-day, the delight in 
new-developed gifts.' In the same way ' humour, paradox, 
fancy, nonsense gild the solidity of a lesson.' If ' Arnoldides ' 
had had a truer and worthier idea of the value of games, and 
had been a better teacher, he would have escaped at any 
rate the error of sharply dividing work from play. Then 
again his discipline in form erred in other respects. He was 
lavish in his rewards ; 

but he ought to have known, as we know, that rewards are 
almost as demoralising as punishments, and that the less we have 
of them the better. Very few boys want them ; the energy that 
they impart to the few does no good to the many. They are un- 
social, they discriminate where we want to solidify, they feed 
vanity where we want to inspire companionship. A very little 
temperate praise, just to give voice to the common admiration for 
excellence, is the best reward, and generally enough. Mr. Chiffers 
gave Jones a book bound in calf for translating a satire of Horace 
without a mistake. If he had only remarked that Jones was not 
such a very bad construer after all, it would have bad as much 
effect, and would have been more in the humour of the game. 

On the other hand, Mr. Chiffers was wrong not to allow 
lounging. ' One listens better if one is comfortable — except, 
perhaps, on warm afternoons.' Of course boys may not 
' loll ' — they probably would not want to ; but if they did, it 
must be stopped. 

The limit is simply that point at which they would cease to 
show respect, I do not say to their beloved instructor, but to each 



A MEMOIR 241 

other, and the system, and to him as representing it. So long as 
they demean themselves as they would in a drawing-room, he 
should be content. 

Mr. Chiffers, too, was a blunderer in desiring to be feared 
in school, but not out of school. ' The attitude of his pupils 
towards him ought at all times and seasons to be much the 
same.' It was an act of silliness, again, to try 'to be a boy 
among boys ' — and an act of silliness to his own detriment, 
since in ' essaying to be what he was not, a boy among 
boys, he naturally omitted to become something more than 
his scholastic duties made him, and remained a sort of 
glorified tradesman.' He was in addition a prig in devoting 
himself wholly to the supposed duty of bringing his moral 
influence to bear upon his boys. How did he know 
that he was better than they ? His own faults were 
not the same as those of his pupils, no doubt — ' he did 
not throw boots about the passages or draw horses in his 
dictionary ' — but was he as a whole, in general tone and 
character, superior to the young life with which he was 
surrounded ? His efforts showed, too, that he knew but little 
of boy-nature, for which direct influence does not as a rule 
do very much, though indirect influence does a great deal. 

The building grows, like the Temple of old, without sound of 
mallet and trowel. What we can do is to arrange matters so as 
to give Virtue her best chance. We can make the right choice 
sometimes a little easier, we can prevent tendencies from blossom- 
ing into acts, and render pitfalls visible. How much indirectly 
and unconsciously we can do, none but the recording angel knows. 
' You can, and you should,' said Chiffers, ' go straight to the heart 
of every individual boy.' Well, a fellow- creature's mind is a 
serious and sacred thing. You may enter into that arcanum once 
a year, shoeless. And in the effort to control the spirit of a pupil, 
to make one's own approval his test, and mould him by the stress 
of our own pressure, in the ambition to do this, the craving for 
moral power and visible guiding, the subtle pride of effective 
agency, lie some of the chief temptations of a schoolmaster's 
work. 

The essay then passes to a criticism of some of ' the 
Chifferesque ' which is heard Sunday after Sunday in the 

R 



242 EDWARD BOWEN 

pulpits of public school chapels. The exhortation to think 
much of past sins, the assertion that it is only cowards who 
tell lies, the clap-trap about ' false phantoms of schoolboy 
honour,' the importance of testing the moral worth of a 
fellow-creature before giving him friendship, the invita- 
tion to the elder lads ' to think every hour of the day about 
influencing the others towards virtue '—these specimens of 
homiletic oratory Edward Bowen condemns and casts aside 
as either unreal or actually misleading. A boy should forget 
his sins ; it is as a rule ' the bold bad boys ' who tell the 
lies, though it is a rule with exceptions ; schoolboy honour is 
not something different from the honour ' which is the same 
in every age and time.' The advice about friendships was in 
flagrant defiance of the example of One who sought the com- 
pany of publicans and sinners ; while as for a continuous in- 
fluence towards virtue to be exercised by the older lads upon 
the younger, just ' fancy the attitude of mind of the captain 
of an eleven who should say at the beginning of an innings, 
" Go to, I will now use my moral influence on my team " ! ' 
The captain of an eleven can perfectly well check swearing, 
and tell the boy who cribs in school that he is a fool. ' But 
that is not using influence ; it is keeping up the spirit of the 
thing, exalted conventionalism.' The author in a penulti- 
mate paragraph gives a few characteristic words of parting 
advice : 

If you want to swim against the stream, you must first learn 
to swim with it. The civic temper is the preparation for the 
heroic, and to overcome is less glorious than to lead. It is the 
same in the inner life of our profession, and we train ourselves, if 
we care for our work more than our hobbies, in smoothness, con- 
formity, tolerance. Schoolmastermg and politics — these are the 
two trades to which this art is needful beyond most others. 
Opportunism is the back view of the edifice of which statesman- 
ship is the facade ; the edifice is one and the same. The Exchequer 
and the Admiralty are at war, but the Government must pass the 
Budget. A permanent secretary finds his political chief hopeless 
and incapable, but he neither says so nor appears to think so. 
You are a headmaster, and your colleagues read the sporting 
papers ; you are an assistant, and your head drones and sleeps ; 
or your governing body does pig-headed things, or your boys are 



A MEMOIE 243 

vulgar. But the art of life consists in making the best of the tools 
that you have, and playing your part with courage, as if they were 
all keen and strong. It is what the great Dundonald could not 
do, and that makes the moral of his life. You believe in Church 
and State, and your environment is radical; or you hold the 
newest heresies, and the tone of the place is all saints and mysteries. 
These things are all less important than what you have to do, and 
it is your business — to use the phrase once more — to play the 
game. Then, when you have once put self and vanity in the 
second place, you will be worth quite as much as a man, and worth 
much more as a schoolmaster. It will not seem unnatural if your 
pupils learn to do the same themselves. Character will shape to- 
gether, interests will drift towards a common end. You will not 
have, like Mr. Chiffers, to pretend to take a boy's point of view ; 
for, widely different as their thoughts are from yours, they will 
yet understand that your temper and desires are the same. If you 
talk with them, you may be a comrade without pretending to be a 
child : when they work with you, they will be your companions, 
wayward, frivolous, stupid, peevish, intractable perhaps, but com- 
panions, fellow-travellers, playmates. 

Another contribution privately made by him in November 
1899 to the discussion of educational questions will also 
be read with interest. It is a letter written to Sir Joshua 
Fitch, formerly chief inspector of training colleges, in reply 
to a request for his opinion upon two important points : 

(1) Was the system of open competition in the selection 
of candidates for the public service satisfactory or not ? 

(2) How far, or in what way, did the system indirectly 
influence the schools and universities from whose ranks the 
public service is thus recruited ? 

It will be seen from the letter sent in reply that 
Edward Bowen thought — (a) that, making considerable 
deductions, the examinations (which had immensely im- 
proved in the way in which they were conducted) on the 
whole did their work well ; (b) that their indirect influence 
on schools and universities— on schools at any rate — was 
only slight. 

The letter, which is now given for the first time in its 
entirety, was as follows : 

B 2 



244 EDWAED BOWEN 

I sent a very hurried answer to your letter on Saturday, being 
specially busy ; but now I will try to say shortly how these points 
strike me. I know next to nothing about any competitions except 
those for the army and for the Indian (and English) higher public 
service. As to the others, however, they must be important if it 
were only on account of the ground they cover. Speaking, how- 
ever, of what are commonly regarded as the higher competitions, 
I have two general remarks : 

(1) The practical details of the examination are extremely im- 
portant, as compared with their general tendency. I think there 
can be no department of human energy in which a slight change for 
better or worse goes so far. Each fresh apportionment of marks, 
each novelty in drawing up papers, has results widely reaching. 

(2) The examinations have not less vastly improved. The 
accumulated experience of the office has told ; great care has been 
given, and has not been thrown away. It is more than thirty 
years since I used to write articles about them in the old 
' Saturday Eeview,' and the difference now is remarkable. I call 
the papers now, on the whole, excellent ; they are a good deal 
better than what reach us from the universities. 

But as to the efficiency of the examinations as a means of 
selection. No doubt Macaulay was too roseate. Character is less 
identical with capacity to make marks than either he supposed, 
or the ordinary journalist supposes now. There are virtues which 
do not pay in examinations, and there are vices consistent with 
success. All this perhaps more than the public supposes. And, 
still further, I cannot see how this can be remedied, though I have 
taken some pains to try and clear the difficulty. But, all the 
same, the main arguments of Macaulay were right, and, however 
great deductions have to be made, I still think that on the whole 
the examinations do the work they were meant to do. On the 
whole, using the words in a liberal sense, they get the best men ; 
and in the present condition of feeling and opinion (which are not 
likely to alter in the immediate future), I do not think any better 
plan is in the field. 

The influence of these competitions on schools and universities 
is, I should say, not very great. We teachers are a race easily 
worried, and perhaps we make much of small annoyances. The 
army examinations are a nuisance ; I don't think we have 
any right to say more. I cannot say seriously that either our 
organisation or our curriculum or our methods are so gravely 
interfered with, or even so abundantly coloured, that we have 
reasonable ground of complaint. In some degree they may help 



A MEMOIR 245 

to keep us alive ; in some degree their arrangements may be, or 
even ought to be, suggestive ; but it does not go very far either for 
good or for evil. All examinations and tests do harm ; some also 
do good. I should not put the Civil Service Examinations as 
having a really serious influence either way ; and whatever there 
is of disturbance has been diminished in recent years. It might 
be diminished further, but it must always exist in some degree. ' 
Nor do I think the influence on boys or undergraduates is very 
strong or very wide. To a few it gives a strong stimulus, which 
has its good and its bad sides ; but this is not very long in point of 
time ; and the number affected is not very large compared with 
the rest who are not affected. Some parents say, ' I will let my 
son try for the army because, anyhow, the prospect will make him 
work.' I acknowledge some truth in what he says ; but it is easy 
to over-estimate it, and, in fact, it is generally over-estimated. 
But my knowledge of schools is greater than of the universities, 
though, of course, I have many old pupils in the latter 



It was in 1893 that he made his first great gift to the 
School. This was in the form of an important extension of 
■ the Philathletic Ground '—the large cricket ground which is 
separated by the road from what is known as ' the Sixth 
Form Ground '—where the majority of the games take 
place and where ' Cricket Bill ' is called. It was followed 
two years later by a large anonymous donation (1,000Z.) 
towards the purchase of the Northwick fields. At what 
date he finally determined to leave the bulk of his property 
to the School it is impossible to say, but there is reason to 
believe that a bequest of land was in his thoughts in 1893. 
In 1900 he purchased « The Grove,' and, though no deed of 
gift was signed, he practically offered it to the Governors to 
do what they liked with. It was his view that the Head- 
master should be relieved of the heavy duties and responsi- 
bilities necessarily connected with a large boarding-house — 
at Harrow the Headmaster's boarding-house is about half 
as large again as any other — and there was, perhaps, a 
plan in his mind by which ' The Grove ' should cease to be a 
boarding-house and become the Headmaster's private resi- 
dence. Such a scheme has not hitherto proved feasible, 



246 EDWAED BOWEN 

and ' The Grove ' remains what it was — as of old, ' lads some 
forty there be ' — but there can be little doubt that in theory- 
Edward Bowen's opinion as to the importance of this 
differentiation of duties in connection with the Headmaster 
was absolutely correct, and it is the view to which effect is 
given at Marlborough. Whether such a reform is to be in- 
definitely delayed or not at Harrow it is difficult to foretell, 
but it is to be hoped that an early solution of such practical 
difficulties as exist may yet be found, and that in this 
respect the wishes of Edward Bowen, and of others as well, 
may in some manner or other be carried into effect. 



At the close of 1898, Mr. Welldon resigned the Head- 
mastership on his acceptance of the Bishopric of Calcutta. 
Edward Bowen was then sixty-three years old, and his 
appointment was out of the question. The choice of the 
governing body fell upon Dr. Joseph Wood, who had made 
for himself a considerable reputation at Leamington and 
afterwards at Tonbridge. It was a selection which Edward 
Bowen welcomed, and during the brief space that the two 
were colleagues there was no sort of shadow over their 
relations with each other. ' I, who knew him only for the 
last few years of his life, had learnt to respect and love 
him more than I can say ' — such was the simple language 
used from the pulpit of the School chapel by Dr. Wood 
after the end had come. But the colleagueship and friend- 
ship were to last little more than two years. 

Sorrows deepened about Edward Bowen's path during 
the last decade of his life — sorrows which the affection of a 
younger generation could only partially relieve. His father 
had passed away at a ripe old age in 1890. His elder 
brother — Lord Bowen — died in 1894, and Lord Bowen's 
widow in 1897, and it need not be said that these were 
heavy blows which left their marks. His old mother still 
remained, but her eldest son's death had permanently 
affected her health ; it was with much difficulty that she 
rallied at all from the shock, and she was never again any- 



A MEMOIE 247 

thing but an enfeebled woman who needed every care. 
She was taken in 1894 by Edward Bowen to live with 
him at Harrow, and was resident in his house at the time of 
his death. As an illustration of the way in which such a 
nature as Edward Bowen's clung to the memory of vanished 
faces, and rejoiced in the echoes of ' voices that are still,' it 
may be mentioned that upon his own death his younger 
brother's letters and papers — the letters and papers of one 
who had gone before him more than twenty years — were 
found in a box on the floor of his room near the window. 
Not only had they never been destroyed, but they had never 
been put out of sight. 

The South African war, too — with which, as has been 
said, he had no sympathy — brought him additional griefs. 
Of the many Harrow officers who lost their lives in it, two 
or three were his old boys, for whom he mourned with the 
somewhat bitter feeling that the sacrifice of them had been 
unnecessary. The death of one of them in particular x was 
an especially heavy blow. Edward Bowen loved this young 
officer almost as his own son, and hardly knew how to bear 
the intelligence that he had succumbed to enteric fever. The 
same night that the news came — so the story goes — he 
went his rounds as usual, some time after lights were out, 
and was seen by a wakeful boy, whose door was open, to 
stop by the panel on which the name of the officer had 
been carved when a member of the House, and by the 
glimmer of the flickering candle in his hand slowly to trace 
over with his finger the letters in the wood. Edward Bowen 
spoke of him a little while afterwards to a lady, who in 
response said something of her hope that good might come out 
of the war. 'Ah,' was the sad reply, 'but I want my boy.' 

There was also in the last two or three years the 
increasing sense that, so far as his work at Harrow was 
concerned, the sands were beyond question beginning to 
run out ; while the doctors were warning him that there 
was an element of extreme precariousness in his life 
whether at Harrow or elsewhere. Strain and effort and 

1 Lieutenant Ernest Reade. He |had served with much distinction and 
courage at Ladysmith. 



248 EDWAED BOWEN 

the refusal to spare himself had done their work, and his 
heart was seriously affected. But Edward Bowen was not 
the man to allow his natural sunniness and gaiety to be 
overclouded by gloom, or rather he was not the man to 
allow others to feel that there was such a cloud upon 
him. In their company the brightness and joy of the 
morning were always about him; he was alone when he 
gave way to a sense of the heaviness of the night. But 
he had his fears, though sudden death was not among 
them. 'What I dread,' he said to an intimate friend, 'is 
old age and solitude.' Whether he had made up his mind to 
resign his mastership altogether, it is difficult to determine ; 
he certainly was contemplating — as was said at the com- 
mencement of this memoir — giving up ' The Grove,' and he 
had built for himself a small house in another part of the 
estate, a little lower down the hill. The Headmaster, how- 
ever, had suggested to him that he should still keep his 
form, and he had resolved to do so, at any rate for a short 
time. But the old keenness, the old vigour, the old inde- 
fatigable energy still remained. He was always ready for 
walks and expeditions. He continued to play football. He 
continued to ride a bicycle. In one or two small ways he 
took more care of himself; but the same can scarcely be 
said of essential precautions. He deliberately preferred to 
run what risk there was, great though that risk was. ' He 
may,' as a colleague has observed, ' have been right, or he 
may have been wrong, but he would hardly have been him- 
self if he had done otherwise.' None besides himself and his 
medical advisers seem to have known the fatal secret, and he 
was spared the struggle with counter-opinions and protests 
which must otherwise have taken place. And so the last 
months of that brilliant life sped on, scarcely any realising 
how near he might be to his goal. A master at the School 
has recalled a characteristic trait : 

He was a lover of little customs. His usual way from school 
or chapel to ' The Grove ' was by the Speech Eoom Garden, but on 
Sunday evening he always went up the steps and by Church 
Hill. He told me that he did so, but gave no reason. Probably 
it was a little observance, for which there was none ; but I have 



A MBMOIE 249 

sometimes wondered whether he turned aside to see the view from 
the churchyard by the ' Peachey Stone. 5 I met him there once 
on a su mm er evening, and as we watched a distant storm, he 
spoke with quite unusual warmth of his love for the wide prospect 
that lay stretched before us, and also told how, years ago, he had 
determined to walk by compass to a hill on the distant horizon, 
and had done it. It was an epitome of himself — the deep feeling 
of the poet, the tireless energy of the man of action. And -now, 
hard by, the flowers are blooming on his grave. 

In 1900 he gave what was to be his last lecture to the 
School in Speech Eoom, on the Peninsular War. It was one 
of three or four which he had during the last ten years 
carefully worked out, others being on the Franco-Prussian 
War and the American Civil War. In 1900, too, he wrote 
what were probably his last set of verses — some vigorous 
and even boisterous lines on that year's match at Lord's. 
At the end of the Easter Term of 1901 he went to his last 
School concert. It was on his birthday, March 30 ; and an old 
pupil noticed afterwards that one of the songs then sung 
was his own, ' If Time is up.' For him time was then within 
ten days of being up. 

He had arranged to go abroad during the Easter holidays 
with his old friends Mr. and Mrs. Bryce on a bicycling tour 
in France. It was while he was in their company that 
the end came. He was as bright and joyous as possible during 
the tour, full of fun and gaiety, and to all appearance well 
and vigorous. On the morning of Easter Monday, April 8, 
the little party passed through Moux, a village near Solieu 
in the Cote d Or. Shortly afterwards they had all got off 
their bicycles to walk up a long hill. At the top of it Mrs. 
Bryce mounted, and Edward Bowen prepared to follow her 
example. His foot was on his bicycle step ; and then in one 
brief moment — ' as the lightning cometh out of the east and 
shineth even unto the west ' — all was over. It is unnecessary 
to dwell on the details of what followed. Every respect, kind- 
ness, and courtesy were shown by the French officials, and 
through the ready help of the English Embassy at Paris the 
necessary formalities w r ere made as easy as possible ; and by 
the Thursday evening all that was mortal of the great Harrow 



250 EDWAED BOWEN 

master had found its temporary home in the Harrow chapel. 
On the following Monday he was buried on the high hill-top, 
under the south wall of the parish church, which crowns it, 
close to ' The Grove,' and within sight of the football field ; 
some of the old heads of his House drawing him from the 
chapel — where the first part of the service was held, and 
where his old chief, Dr. Butler, read the Lesson — to his final, 
most beautiful resting place. It was a procession never to 
be forgotten by those who saw it. There has never been at 
Harrow any such gathering of old Harrovians and friends 
of the School, except on the one occasion of the Tercentenary 
Festival. 

On the evening of the first Sunday of the summer term 
a special memorial sermon was preached by the Headmaster 
(Dr. Wood) . In the course of it he said : 

There are few among us, if they rightly analyse their own 
character, who would not find that the silent and half -unconscious 
influence of example had far more to do, in making them what 
they are, than any reasoning or argument. So strong is personal 
influence, which strikes home rather through the heart than the 
brain, and dwells unchangeable in the memory. 

So it is with that unique and beautiful life the loss of which is 
mourned by Harrow and by all to whom Harrow is dear. For 
the first thing which will occur to every one of us to say of the 
death of Mr. Bowen is that his memory and the example of his 
character are the imperishable inheritance of the School he loved 
and served so long and so devotedly. His brilliant qualities of 
mind, his unselfish generosity, his kindness and tenderness of 
heart, his simplicity of life and character, will be treasured by 
generations of Harrow boys with an affection and an admiration 
which will end only with their own lives — and not then. 

He seems to me to have combined, in a way I never knew 
surpassed or equalled, the qualities which arouse admiration with 
those which inspire confidence and affection. Everything he did 
was well done, and he did nearly everything. A brilliant scholar, 
the ablest and most inspiring of teachers, a poet of real genius, 
full of wit and humour, the most delightful of companions, instinct 
with untiring energy and life, entering even to the very last into 
all the many-sided activities of School, a born leader of men. 

And with it all, how simple of heart, how tender to those in 



A MEMOIE 251 

sorrow, how true a friend and counsellor ! Few of us but have 
reason to know how loving and generous a heart was his. In 
any trouble or anxiety, it was to him we went for sympathy and 
advice. We sadly recognise the fact that there has passed away 
from us one who was a mighty force for good in Harrow, and 
whose death is an irreparable loss to one and all. 

The testimony of two others — both of them old friends 
and colleagues — may also be quoted, and with their words 
of love and appreciation this memoir may fittingly conclude. 
The first shall be that of his close and intimate associate, 
Mr. Charles Colbeck, who has succeeded him as senior 
master on the Modern Side. He writes : 

My friendship with Edward Bowen dates from the time when 
I came to Harrow as a master thirty years ago, in the year 1871, 
two years after taking my degree. I was eleven years his junior, 
but we were both Trinity men, and many common friends there 
aided a community of tastes, occupations, and interests to make 
the interval of years from the first seem as nothing except when 
youth or impetuosity needed the helping experience, I will not 
say of age, for he was never old, but of maturity and wisdom. 
Two years later he asked me to take a Modern Side form, and 
thenceforward for nearly thirty years, in work as well as in play, 
I had the privilege of very constant, and at times of very intimate, 
intercourse with him. 

Looking back upon those years now, and considering what I 
can set down which may help to explain to those who did not 
know him why he gained to so remarkable degree the confidence, 
admiration, and affection of so many and various men, I find, as 
others have done, that it is not an easy thing to delineate his 
character or estimate his influence ; for he was in many ways 
very reticent, he lived a lonely life, he was not given to preaching 
upon the housetop, nor to pressing his opinions upon others 
unless some definite subject was under discussion for a practical 
end, and so busy that the moments of intercourse were largely 
occupied with the lighter talk of recreation or daily life. 

I think what impressed and attracted me most at first was the 
keenness of his interests, the gaiety of his humour, the enjoyment 
he derived from life, and his efforts to share the enjoyment with 
others, and especially with boys. What differentiated him most 
obviously was the small personal share of the pleasant things 
which he so evidently enjoyed that he claimed, or rather I should 



252 EDWAED BOWEN 

say that he would consent to accept, for himself. What differen- 
tiated him most deeply, I am inclined to think now, was his 
incessant unobtrusive observance of what would give pleasure to 
others and the skill with which he contrived to bring it about. 
He never praised except with sincerity and delicacy, but he 
never forgot that praise is very welcome and very encouraging. 
As an offset, unconsciously perhaps, he claimed and exercised a 
right of pleasantry and badinage which gave much pleasure to 
others, and never went further than to serve as a wholesome 
reminder to its temporary victim that the petty follies of man- 
kind were only useful as a foil to wit. But I never knew 
him otherwise than tender to real feeling, however passionate 
and wrong. It goes without saying that he liked others to 
try to chaff him, and he had a rare gift for maintaining a 
paradox when rule or reason or common-sense was arrayed 
against him. I have often wondered whether his all-pervading 
unselfishness was the result of some cross in earlier life, pos- 
sibly of some crisis ; but I am inclined to think that it was not, 
and that the touching words of the Master of Trinity l are very 
near the truth. It was a precious gift of his nature ; but I do 
know that the natural gift was nobly cultivated. The long ill- 
nesses ending in death of two brothers and a sister-in-law revealed 
a sustained power of devoted attention, with which no stress of 
work was ever allowed to interfere, to which it would be hard to 
find a parallel. Was a boy ill whom he knew, no matter whether 
he was his own pupil or not, he would contrive something to 
beguile the weariness of confinement, and give to its contrivance 
endless pain and thought. Did another pupil write to him, the 
answer was prompt and not perfunctory — witty, affectionate, in- 
vigorating. I was walking once with him in Wales, and we 
obtained shelter and afternoon tea in a little cottage among the 
hills. After tea I was smoking or amusing myself with noting 
the room and its contents, but he had noted the invalid looks of the 
husband, and was taking down name and address, and offering the 
aid of admittance to a hospital. His power of self-control was 
very great ; most of his playmates must again and again have seen 
him hurt, even severely hurt, but it passed unheeded ; his control of 
his temper was no less complete. He was seldom angry, never 
without grave cause, never carried away by it, never discourteous 
for a moment. This I say deliberately, for I have seen him sub- 
jected to severe provocation. It was not the acquiescence of a 

1 Vide p. 4. 



A MEMOIR 253 

weak nature, it must be remembered ; he felt keenly enough, 
judged severely enough, maintained his rights strictly, punished 
severely, but he held himself in hand as a matter of principle. A 
schoolmaster upon occasions, happily rare, has to exercise extreme 
severity. I have known the boy in at least one such case 
speak of him years afterwards with a warmth of affectionate 
respect that showed that even in such circumstances he could 
inspire hope. He kept a record of all his pupils from the first, 
which he wrote up carefully once a year. It was partly, I think, 
this careful noting of progress in a boy's life that made him so 
discerning and safe a judge of conduct ; but this quality of sound 
judgment had also its grounds in his clear perception of the 
complexity of human life, of the need for an honest science of 
' casuistry,' of the aid the intellect must give the heart in deter- 
mining the right course of action. He had thought things out in 
this sphere as in others, but he did not dogmatise. If you asked 
his advice, he gave his reasons. I have alluded to his reticence 
and reserve, and it was marked; but if advice was seriously 
sought, it was never refused, and if you asked his opinion on 
some speculative point of morals or religion, he held that it was 
right for him to give it to you, with the one sole but imperative 
condition that you asked as a seeker after truth and not from 
curiosity. His was an eager mind to which inactivity was 
unknown, and to many he may have seemed restless and even 
impatient, not in temper, but intellectually. 

But in reality, though active, his mind did not work fast ; he 
read slowly and always impressed on boys the need of so doing. 
He composed slowly. On the other hand, he talked faster and 
certainly wrote faster (and worse) than most men. And he 
certainly loved a race — a contest — whether the exercise were one 
of body or of mind. The exertion pleased him in itself, and he 
encouraged it in others, and would have maintained its claims. In 
fact, as appears from more than one of his songs, he regarded 
games as things good in themselves, wholly innocent, and to be 
sought, not as recreations, but for their own sake. The spirit of 
man was at its best when playing a game strenuously, loyally, 
with full and conscious enjoyment. What spoilt the game, as it 
spoiled life, was laziness, selfishness, ill temper, excess, extra- 
vagance, or vanity. Be simple, be sincere, be fair, rule your spirit, 
be courteous, be generous, be modest, and then for you the ills 
of fife will be but the accidents which they really are. It was 
the Stoic's defiance of fortune allied with the Epicurean's pursuit 
of innocent pleasure, but there was also the Christian spirit of pity 



254 EDWARD BOWEN 

and brotherhood and self-denial, if by self-denial a good object 
could be attained. Of self-denial for its own sake he would have 
none. He hated injustice, and showed lasting anger, so far as 
I know, towards it alone. If I attempted to classify his interests, 
I should be inclined to say that he cared for things somewhat in the 
following order : boys, literature, games, history, walks, politics. 
Boys must be understood to include men and women, for assuredly 
no small part of his life was bound up in his friendships, deep, 
lasting, valued, and fostered as they were ; but I think his friend- 
ship with his boys held the first place in his heart, and I rejoice to 
think it was so, for he gave his life to his boys, and their love for 
him made us, who regretted often the scanty remnants of his time 
that could be given elsewhere, feel that perhaps it was best so for 
him as well as for them. In literature he was well read, and loved 
the best prose and poetry equalty. His own prose style was 
admirable, clear, polished, terse, and forcible. His songs speak 
for themselves. Of games he would probably have given the palm 
to football — he certainly most excelled in it ; but he was a better 
bat than he would admit. I have seen him save a hard game 
repeatedly, and until he was fifty he was a first-rate field, especially 
as long-leg, and kept wicket well to the last. To be in with him 
and run short runs in a country match when the bails were off, 
the bowler disabled by a wild return, and an objurgating wicket- 
keeper bombarded by third man and mid-on alternately, was a 
pleasure wholly without alloy. He played fives well, and was 
fond of it ; but the game being played by four only in a small 
court may be treated conversationally, and the spirit of fun 
generally prompted him to keep up a running fire of jokes 
which interfered with accuracy of play. Golf and lawn-tennis 
were too modern for him ; his tastes were fixed, his time too fully 
occupied. He was an excellent judge of cricket, and liked nothing 
better than watching a good match at Lord's. A little paper of his 
on the placing of the field, written for the benefit of a Harrow 
captain soon after the Australians had taught us to innovate and 
improve, is excellent in matter and in style, and is a good instance 
of the moral importance which he saw in games. The institution 
of Football ' Torpids,' of the ' Infants' ' Match at Cricket, similarly 
show the pains he took to make the older train the younger, and 
his insistence on the solidarity of the School in play as well as 
in work. 

I do not know when or how his love of history began. He 
won the ' William the Third ' Essay at Cambridge, but I do not 
think he made a special study of the subject, and the Cambridge 



A MEMOIE 255 

of his day certainly gave it but little encouragement and no 
teaching. But he was deeply convinced of its importance, and pro- 
moted the teaching of it in many ways. It was a subject which lent 
itself to his methods of teaching — full of small points, beyond the 
reach of none, good for the teacher, affording him the opportunity 
to fill himself full and teach himself empty, very human, very 
practical, very varied, good in itself as training, good in that it 
could be treated pictorially, dramatically, romantically, and that 
to some extent — for the capable and interested, to a great extent — 
it could be treated not as something to be taken on trust, but as 
something to be inquired into, corrected by original research, 
criticised, estimated. He had a first-rate knowledge of Napoleon's 
campaigns, a wide knowledge of all battles and battle-fields, and a 
competent knowledge of history in general. Give the outline 
from the first at an early age, he would say, go over it again and 
again, go deeper, go wider, go to the fountain head if you can. 
He knew no distinction between ancient and modern, and treated 
a campaign of Caesar and the last frontier war in the same fashion. 
He would procure or make maps, get up all the facts and give a 
clear lecture on either, sparing his pupils all the pains he could, but 
exacting from them full work at the same time. I do not think 
any one so successfully possessed both the inspiring and the driving 
power, which separately make so imperfect a teacher, and the com- 
bination of which is so rare. Here again he had thought the 
matter out, and was full of contrivances for shortening the time 
given in school to testing and marking the work done out of it, so 
leaving the maximum of time for the stimulating oral instruction 
of which the only fault was perhaps an extreme rapidity of 
utterance. ' I don't know how it is, sir,' a boy has often said to 
me, ' but if Mr. Bowen takes a lesson he makes you work twice as 
hard as other masters, but you like it twice as much and you learn 
far more.' He had a great power of making older boys judge 
themselves, and offer an adequate punishment of an intellectual 
kind for their shortcomings. Throughout in all matters there was 
an appeal to the boy himself, to his best part, to his conscience. 
To train the conscience so that its discernment of right and wrong 
was clear, and the following of it was habitual, was his method. 
If there wasno conscience, then still there was something to be found 
to appeal to. I have known him keep a very bad and weak boy 
straight for a while by an appeal to his honour as a gentleman, 
when it seemed that nothing could influence him. He coerced 
and punished in the ordinary way, if necessary, without the least 
reluctance or weakness. 



256 EDWAED BOWEN 

The way of transgressors was always made hard, but he never 
gave a boy up as hopeless or turned from him unpityingly. If the 
master's vigilance, he held, made it impossible, or all but impossible, 
for offences not to be discovered, not only was much positive evil 
saved, but a standard was maintained which in itself gave dignity 
to discipline and helped the slow process by which the external 
law became the internal principle. There is no such virtue as 
obedience, I have heard him say often, and he disliked sermons 
on this topic, meaning that obedience was necessary as a means 
to an end, but not an end in itself. Again, he always made clear 
the distinction between the punishment which could be jested 
about and the graver punishment which could not. His ingenious 
playfulness delighted in all manner of petty devices for curing 
petty faults and leaving no bitterness behind. He was never 
afraid of showing his enjoyment of simple and trifling pleasures, 
and I have often noted how he influenced boys in his House or 
Form in this direction — a wholesome influence — for boys, as well 
as men, are apt to neglect as dull all but the more important or 
exciting forms of activity, to waste too much time and money on 
them, and to find life insipid without them. This feature of his 
character was the more remarkable because he was no recluse, but 
a man of the world with no illusions and a sound judgment on 
all important questions of politics or conduct, one whose opinion 
was often asked on subjects that were not educational, and most 
keenly interested in all the problems of life. Nor was he un- 
ambitious. He would have liked a political life, and during 
some fifteen years made several attempts to enter Parliament. 
He failed, and after just missing being selected to contest the 
Harrow Division of Middlesex in 1885, he did not try again. 
Partly, he felt he was too old to learn the business of a politician, 
and too clear-sighted to think that there was little or nothing to 
learn ; partly the House, which had at first been a task from 
which he shrank, grew to be a work to which he was content to 
devote his whole energies until his death. I doubt if he would 
have made an impression in Parliament as a speaker — his voice 
was not strong, and his delivery in a set speech was on the whole 
not effective — but he would have been a first-rate committee 
man or administrator, and had he entered it as a young man, 
might have gone far. He was a thorough Liberal to the last, 
though he left his party on the Irish question, never having 
believed in the economics of the land policy of Mr. Gladstone, 
and being wholly averse to Home Eule. His was the Liberalism 
of the school of John Mill and John Bright, and he made 



A MEMOIE 257 

perhaps too little allowance for the possibility that communities 
under the influence of strong feeling may deliberately determine 
to organise themselves under laws that disregard the rules of 
political economy. In this respect alone his judgment was some- 
times at fault. He thought that men would reason more, and 
follow reason more, in their conduct than they do. Of his 
generosity there is no need to speak ; but it is worth while to note 
that, though boundlessly generous, he was never wasteful and 
seldom imposed upon. He gave because the need was great, or 
the cause a good one, or the pleasure he conferred great ; but he 
did not encourage extravagance, nor give to avoid importunity. 
In one respect alone was he extravagant. He would bestow time 
and pains on the requests and wants of others with a Javishness 
so disproportionate to their claims or importance, that I think not 
even his own ingenuity could have justified what he wasted. 

The second and closing testimony shall be that of 
Mr. E. Bosworth Smith — like Mr. Charles Colbeck, the very 
affectionate and loyal friend of many years, and a colleague 
bound to him by links of sympathy which the lapse of time 
only rendered stronger and more irrefragable — who wrote 
thus to ' The Harrovian : ' 

My work as a Harrow master began, as it is now all but 
ending, with Edward Bowen. I lived in his House during the 
first year of my mastership, saw what he was like ' in his work 
and his play,' learned, I hope, many lessons of incalculable value 
from him ; and now, looking back on thirty-seven years of 
common — if of all too unequal — work, and of unbroken confidence 
and friendship, it seems to me that his fife has been as complete 
as his character was unique, and that his death, even now while 
we are mourning most deeply his irreparable loss, seems only to 
have put the finishing touch, to have been the crown, as it were, 
to the whole. It is exactly the death which he himself would 
have wished, which all his friends would have wished for him. 
He has 'passed,' he has been ' translated,' and who will say that 
he had not well earned it ? ' He was not ; for God took him.' 

Seldom, surely, has anyone combined such exceeding subtlety 
of intellect with such transparent simplicity, such childlikeness of 
character. His character had many sides to it indeed, as a 
diamond has many facets ; but each side was as clear as crystal. 
Seldom has anyone, with such brilliant and varied gifts — gifts 
calculated to make him shine in any sphere — devoted himself so 

S 



258 EDWAED BOWEN 

unreservedly, so whole-heartedly to the work which he had marked 
out for himself at Harrow. He seemed to me to have within him 
an unlimited supply of life, and, what is rarer, an equally un- 
limited capacity for interesting himself in it, and for enjoying it. 
What indeed was there that was at all enjoyable or valuable — 
except, perhaps, repose — that he did not enjoy? The humdrum 
and routine, which must form so large a part of a teacher's life, 
were never humdrum and routine to him, for he put the whole of 
his abounding energies into his work, and round its driest details 
there played and nickered, as with a lambent flame, his joyous 
spirit, finding expression, now, perhaps, in a striking parallel, now 
in a startling paradox, now in a touch of humour, and, once and 
again, in a note of pathos, that pathos which forms the under-song 
of all earnest life, and which made, to those who had eyes to see 
or minds to comprehend, every lesson of his to be a revelation, 
every task a pastime. 

A stranger who saw him watching every ball that was bowled 
on the cricket field, through a livelong summer's afternoon, as 
keenly as though the fate of an empire depended upon it, or heard 
him discussing the chances and ' auguring the fate ' of a candidate 
for the Eleven ; or, again, one who watched him ' dropping down 
the hill ' day after day, in defiance, as we now know, of all 
doctors' warnings, to join, as he continued to do up to within the 
last week or two of his sixty-five years of life, in his House 
football, or saw him, as I often did myself, with something of a 
sad foreboding, labouring up the hill again, after the game was 
over, might well have been excused for thinking that he was a 
man wholly and entirely given to athletics. 

If, again, the same stranger had been admitted — as distin- 
guished or inquiring Americans or Germans sometimes were — to 
hear a lesson in his Form-room, and had learned what a lesson in 
his hands was capable of being ; or if he had looked into his study 
at any moment between his solitary and hasty meal, at 6 or 7 p.m., 
and midnight or much later, and watched him preparing the 
lessons for next day, of which others might well have thought him 
already a past master, determined to know everything that could 
be known about them, and to put new life and light into what was 
to him already a twice-told tale ; or, again, if he had heard him 
read an essay on some educational or intellectual problem, or 
some aspect of school life, he could hardly have thought otherwise 
than that he was wholly absorbed in things of the mind or in 
moral conduct. So absorbed, indeed, was he during term time in 
his attention to the alternating work and amusements of the 



A MEMOIE 259 

School, that, pre-eminently sociable though he was, he denied 
himself all the attractions of society, hardly ever even visiting 
London, or dropping in to have a talk with a friend. He seemed 
to have eyes or attention for nothing but his appointed work. 

But those who thought so knew only half the man ; perhaps, 
less than half of him. If he could find time for nothing else, he 
always found time to give any amount of attention and sympathy 
to those who came to him for them, or who, it occurred to him, 
might be likely to benefit by them. To be in trouble or sorrow or 
difficulty, was a sure passport to his heart. His judgment was 
almost always sound ; his kindness and his helpfulness unlimited. 
How often has it been his to lessen the sorrows and to increase 
the joys of those who consulted him ! How often has he been 
able — one of the divinest of all Divine gifts — to discern the ' soul of 
goodness in things evil ' ! How many pupils, how many friends, 
has he been able to lift to their higher and better selves, criticising, 
reproving, comforting, suggesting, stimulating, inspiring ! 

Behind the word-fencing, the straw-splitting, the play of 
fancy, the blithesome jests, the delicate and delicious irony, the 
brilliant paradoxes, the apparent levity, which gave him and 
others so much intellectual pleasure, and which, as they lay upon 
the surface, a mere outsider might imagine to be the real man, 
there ran the deep under-current of the most earnest and serious, 
the most true and tender of natures. 

What devotion to duty there was in him, what sincerity, what 
purity, what open-handedness, what magnanimity ! To know 
Edward Bowen was a liberal education in itself ; while to be ad- 
mitted to his inner circle, to know him intimately, as some of his 
colleagues and pupils did — most of all, perhaps, those who were in- 
vited to join him in his annual walk through parts of England, or in 
his travels over the battle-fields of the Continent — was to love him 
with a depth of love, and to admire him with an intensity of admira- 
tion, to which it would be hard to find many parallels. Those who 
walked with him, saw him, perhaps, at his very brightest. There 
was not a turn of the road, not a study of the Ordnance map, not 
a meal, not the signboard of a country inn, not a discomfort, that 
did not seem to give him material for ever fresh pleasure. 

To pass into his Form or his Division — how often have I noticed 
it in pupils of my own ! — was to pass under the wand of the en- 
chanter. The sleepy bestirred themselves, the dullard threw off 
something at least of his dullness, the boy who had been pro- 
nounced hopeless by less long-suffering or more hasty judges, 
found that there was hope in him and for him yet ; the intelligent 

s2 



260 EDWAED BOWEN 

and energetic learned, perhaps for the first time, the full value of 
energy and of knowledge for their own sake. And what a marvel 
of good temper he was ! Did anyone ever see him angry when 
teaching, anyone ever see him even ruffled? Difficulties of 
discipline he had none ; he could afford to allow his pupils to be 
merry, even, on occasion, to be boisterous, provided only that 
they were alert. He rode with a light rein indeed, but they knew 
that the rein was always there, and he never needed to tighten 
it. Just as, by his genius for military history, by his marvellous 
memory for military details, and by his pictorial power, he managed 
to make the history of the Napoleonic campaigns the vehicle for 
teaching an outline of much of modern history ; just as again, in his 
so-called ' astronomy ' lectures, given to all the pupils in his House 
who chose, he managed to cover, from time to time, most of the 
outlines of human knowledge ; so by precept and by practice, in 
hours of rest as well as in hours of work, in times of joy as well 
as of sorrow, he managed to make his famous formula of ' Always 
play the game ' cover nearly the whole ground of boy-life and con- 
duct. The very glance of his ever-questioning eager eye, the quick 
turns of his remarkable and expressive face, the movements of his 
body, the pace at which he walked, all indicated the vast reserve 
of force and energy that lay within. The flash of his eye, his 
flashes of silence, too, when an important matter was in dispute, 
often spoke more eloquently than other people's speech. 

Felix opportunitate mortis, surely, if any man ever was so. 
He was ' translated ' in a moment, swift, sudden, entrancing ; in 
the presence of two intimate and devoted friends, in the full pos- 
session of all his varied faculties, before his eye had grown dim or 
his natural force abated, without one physical pain, without one 
pang of parting. 

When a friend wrote to him a few years ago to sympathise 
with him on the loss of his, perhaps, more widely known, but 
hardly more brilliant brother, Lord Bowen, his simple answer to 
her was, ' I am content to wait.' Yes : like his own ' Shemuel 
the Bethlehemite,' whose memory he has consecrated in one of 
the most touching and deeply religious of his poems, ' he sat alone, 
and waited ' till, ' touched by beckoning hands that led,' he died, 
as he had lived, ' content.' 

He has left to Harrow many precious legacies ; but the most 
precious of them all is the memory of himself. 



APPENDICES 



ESSAYS 
I 

THE INFLUENCE OF SCENEEY ON NATIONAL 
CHAEACTEE ' 

My love has talked with rocks and trees ; 

He finds on misty mountain-ground 

His own vast shadow glory-crowned ; 
He sees himself in all he sees. 

In Memoriam, xcvii. 

Man's nature is almost as obscure as his history, and in neither can 
we classify the influences at work. But progress in the knowledge of 
both is equally possible ; and, if rightly regarded, success in the unfolding 
of history is no small encouragement to advance in the other direction. 
Two distinct analogies exist between the two studies. In the first place, 
both belong to that happy region of unpractically which is brought as an 
accusation against the less common of the two inquiries, and which 
would seem to be a great element of all that is good for the mind. It 
may be said of both alike, that whatever benefit they confer, success is 
less important than its pursuit, and that all the advantages in any way 
derivable from a whole life spent in either study is only after all indirect. 
The other analogy observable is less easy to state, but not, I hope, less 
useful to contemplate. It is this— that the possibility of arriving at truth 
is of the same order in both ; and when in considering man's moral and 
intellectual nature we are discouraged by the reflection that no result 
arrived at by a priori reasoning can be depended upon, and yet that no 
result arrived at otherwise than by such reasoning seems worthy of the 
greatness of the subject, and that when we lay down anything as dis- 
covered, the infinite nature of this, as of every abstract question, seems to 
demand that it should not be thus only, rather than in the opposite way— 
we may derive no small assurance from remembering that the same may 
be said of historical research, while that in it, nevertheless, there are 
undoubted facts, particular and one-sided, which are distinctly presented 
to our understanding and must certainly be received and believed. 

i A College Prize Essay, 1857. 



264 EDWAED BOWEN 

Considering then, firstly, that results arrived at in the investigation of 
human character are possible, and, secondly, that they are useful, I pur- 
pose, in the present essay, to examine in what way and how far the 
character, and especially national character, is affected by the peculiarities 
of natural scenery. And I may make the remark that the chief requisite 
for this examination is honesty, and that no one, without making the 
experiment, can possibly know how difficult it is to avoid confusing the 
effect produced by the scenery of a country with that produced by its 
physical peculiarities, which is of a distinct, though often hardly dis- 
tinguishable, order. But candidly avowing the difficulty, I promise that 
no confusion shall be intentionally made, and that the difficulty shall not 
be increased by dishonesty of treatment. 

In a national history much must always be allowed to chance. There 
is danger in trying to explain everything, to impute motives too closely, 
to define principles and assign causes too accurately. And so also in 
treating of the nature of men, it is not possible to draw a map of the 
country ; we can only do as they do at sea, let down the lead here and 
there, establish certain tests of reference, and by them approximate to a 
right result. If, then, we consider what the influence of scenery has been 
in the direction of religion and religious imagery ; if we observe what root 
it has taken in the language and literature of the people, and how readily 
it enters into then- associations of ideas, and notice its extent as far as we 
can from simple experience, and the effect we ourselves usually feel — this 
will nearly exhaust our means of attaining to the truth of the question. 

But before proceeding to illustrate particular influence by those 
examples and comparisons which most prominently present themselves, 
let us say a few words on character generally. The best character is an 
union of habits all good. Imperfection lies in an union of several depra- 
vities. Now, if this is allowed, and if it is allowed that we are all imper- 
fect, we shall be in a position to prove that certain very common views of 
the perfect character are erroneous. For it is the duty of everyone to 
render his character good, by training each habit as nearly as possible to 
perfection ; and if one is neglected for the purpose of improving another, 
or one be allowed to overwhelm another, a breach of duty is committed. 
But people commonly think otherwise, for they allow, and praise, and 
recommend what is called a ruling passion — which phrase implies not so 
much one habit called forth into especial exercise by the force of outward 
circumstances (a thing very different), but the actual predominance of 
that habit in the mind. Thus also, acting upou impulse is praised, 
especially if the choice be a right one ; and from the fact that whatever 
is original generally pleases, we may safely infer that impulsiveness is, 
with human nature, not the exception, but the rule. 

To the reasoning which shows this to be wrong, it is no answer to 
point to the actual fact that men always will, or (as it is said) must, have 
for the most part ruling passions ; for that argument could only proceed 
on the assumption that it is usual with men to have their characters 
rightly regulated. The mind is complex, and the character grows around 



THE INFLUENCE OF SCENEEY 265 

it, and is shaped by those things which affect it, and it is necessary for all 
feelings to play upon it in due proportion. Vigour of character is sup- 
ported by alternation of passions, and toned by their regulation. What, 
then, is to be said of Clarkson and Howard ? This : that partly one side 
of their character may have shown more in relief, because we can never 
know a man's whole nature, and only see how it acts upon historical cir- 
cumstances with which we are familiar ; and partly that for the sake of 
the great good they did, they sustained an injury of the moral nature, 
which may have been greater or smaller, but which in some cases we can 
certainly trace ; and sometimes it is interesting so to do. Assuming, then,' 
that a ruling passion is inconsistent with the human perfection of 
character, we say that the true and best study of nature will tend to 
remove ruling passions, will destroy impulsiveness, and substitute earnest- 
ness, but that, man being imperfect and liable to alternations of feeling, 
it is accordingly as he allows the various kinds of natural scenery to 
encourage the feelings with which they are in every one connected, that 
this character will experience a corresponding change. 

In most nations the deepest feelings are connected with religion, 
though less, perhaps, in the Teutonic than in some other races ; and thus 
it is particularly interesting to observe what part scenery holds in filling 
up the details of the pictures which different creeds present. It is 
generally better to take broad and well-known instances than to deal 
too much in particulars. Now, in most religious schemes a place of 
future punishment holds a prominent position. Two notions in regard 
to it have especially prevailed ; and it is remarkable that these depend, 
not on race, but on geography. The southern nations are scorched by 
the heat of the sun, love the shade, praise all that is cool as pleasant ; 
day after day they see the clear sky, deep with blue, and reflecting the 
glare and heat of the almost vertical sun ; see the dust raised and the 
flowers drooping for want of shelter from its beams ; and accordingly 
they can find no better expression for their ideas of extreme punishment 
than flames of fire. Nor was any argument so powerful with the 
missionaries who first preached Christianity in Mexico, as that which 
they derived from being able to express this element of Christian doctrine 
in imagery which, borrowed from the South, is ill adapted to our 
temperate climate. On the contrary, the Northern Scandinavian of old, 
as he looked out on his cheerless landscape, longed for the warmth 
of the sun, clung to the fire, cursed the frost and snow, and his Hell was 
icy and cold, and eternally dark and wintry. Another difference, too, 
may be traced mainly to this influence of scenery. The Italian with his 
wide views and clear horizon, or the Arab, whose prospect is an unbroken 
expanse as far as the eye can see, loves the hollow valley and limited 
landscape ; and so Hell with him is as wide as Heaven. The mytho- 
logist of the North, on the other hand, encompassed in mountain and 
mist, finds every landscape cramped ; and accordingly he imprisons his 
demons. We remark, too, that in the future awards preference is given 
to the manly character — a distinctive feature in the northern regions ; 



266 EDWARD BOWEN 

the warrior, who perishes with arms in hand, will eat and drink — northern 
again — for ever in Valhalla ; he who dies a natural death will, if not 
very wicked, share the somewhat sparer diet of Hela. 

Again, there is another feature that will enter largely into every 
mythology. Every nation worships the powers of nature until it feels 
itself able to cope with them ; then it raises them along with itself. 
Here again we shall find two different types of natural powers reverenced. 
Whether the Greek enjoyed his scenery in the same sense in which we 
do, we will not now stop to dispute ; but whatever else he may have 
felt on the subject of natrue, he certainly sympathised with and loved 
the rich vegetation of the land, the bursting forth of spring, the luxurious 
development of vegetable life ; and Bacchus is, beyond question, the 
popular god, and his vine the type of the feeling. The Greek never 
loved the sun for warming himself, but felt gratitude for his warming 
the trees and flowers. Then, again, we must remember what his feeling 
was toward the mountains and rivers, which he peopled with gods and 
nymphs ; it was one of complacent pride, with some slight fear to 
impart a piquancy to the sentiment. And if utilitarianism had been all, 
and he only liked Nature for the good she did him, we should find a 
very different choice ; for navigation up the Peneus is impossible ; 
Achelous is constantly injuring his own stream ; and Parnassus and 
Taygetus are singularly ill adapted for the feeding of flocks. But if the 
clear cool stream and the gloomy mountain top had no fascination what- 
ever for his eyes, and if the expression of this in his religious legends had 
no power over his heart, it is difficult to account for the extraordinary and 
unparalleled popularity of those poets who most express the feeling — 
Homer, Euripides, Aristophanes. And what was the war cry of Salamis '? 
In defence of what was the muster and the charge ? First then* homes, 
then the shrines of their gods, then the sepulchres of their fathers. 1 
Not liberty, but the land. Perhaps the tone of all Greek philosophy, 
too, which endeavom - ed to represent, rather than (like ours) to find the 
truth, points the same way. The situation of Athens and Delphi, the 
popular and often-recurring sentiment of indigenousness, the quiet sub- 
mission to nature and to natural obstacles and barriers, are further 
testimonies. And if the distinction is to be made at all, we may say that 
the Greek loved nature more for its own sake, and more directly, than 
most nations of whose feelings we are able to form a judgment. 

But to return to the subject of religion. A tropical clhnate, with 
rapid alternations of heat and cold, light and darkness, sunshine and 
storm, is peculiarly adapted to suggest positive and negative poles of 
goodness and power, opposite spirits of good and evil, in the universe. 
The Indian mythological system may, in great part perhaps, be 

1 S> iraiSes 'EWrjvwv, ire, 
eKevdepovre irarpiS', i\ev6epovre Se 
TralSas, ywaTaas, dewv re irarpcpcvv e'877, 
OiJKas re irpoyovwv. 

JEschylus, Pereee, 402-405. 



THE INFLUENCE OF SCENEEY 267 

traced to this cause ; and without wishing to be hasty in general state- 
ments, I think it will be found that an equable monotony, or at all events 
a gradual variety of climate, is unfavourable to the idea of two opposite 
deities. The Brahmin, Hottentot, the tribes toward the extremity of 
South America, exposed to the sudden storm, the rapidly recurring heat, 
the overpowering drought, the unexpected chill, develop this system of 
theology most strongly. After them the ancient German, the Chinese, 
the Persian, the North American Indian : while the Peruvian,^ the 
Esquimaux, the Scandinavian, 1 whose climate is more subject to law and 
order, worship more exclusively a mild and beneficent Power of Good. 
In many other details, which we can trace — in the gloomy ocean sur- 
rounding gods and men, the ash tree sprinkled by the snow, the old 
giants of frost and snow, who were before the world itself, the snake 
encompassing the earth, and the adders with which the wicked will be 
punished — in that awful winter when the end approaches and the twilight 
of the gods draws on, the Scandinavian mythology, which not improbably 
symbolises the history of the race, bears a clear impression of the influence 
of the scenery of the North. 

Another method of comparison between different nations, with regard 
to the influence we are considering, is afforded by their literature, and 
the effect which it has upon the people : though still of their character we 
can only form rude notions assisted by their history and statistics. 
Literature, however, will only guide us in very few instances ; and we 
are generally obliged to form an estimate on independent grounds. I 
propose, therefore, not indeed to review in order the different nations of 
which we know anything in ancient and modern times — for this would be 
long and very often afford no result — but to consider in general terms 
some few countries, in addition to those above touched upon, which offer 
themselves prominently as tests, and to examine the character of the 
people in the light thrown upon it by what we know of the scenery and 
of their susceptibility to its distinctive features. Another comparison 
might be made by a classification of the modes in which the influence 
may work, as, for instance, into direct and reactionary : as we may say 
that from looking upon a rock-bound coast, a gloomy barren climate and 
the dark northern ocean surging upon the wintry shore, the inhabitant of 
Norway derives a character of homeliness and hospitality which the 
farmers of Holland derive from totally opposite causes. We should, how- 
ever, find it hard to increase the categories in number — impossible to 
extend them to all the cases before us ; and we should probably lose sight 
of what is more important, the influence itself, and the extent and causes 
of its action. 

1 Loki and the ttsix were not antagonistic principles of equal power, but simply 
obnoxious gods; and though the consummation depends upon them, they do not 
play a very prominent part in the mythology. With regard to the Peruvian system 
it is not generally remembered that in the Zendavesta the opposing powers are 
both subordinate to, and emanate from, the higher and previous ' Zemani,' illimited 
and uncreated Time ; who created Ormuzd, the type of light and goodness, and, by a 
quibble of the Persian sages, was said to permit the antagonistic Ahriman. 



268 EDWAED BOWEN 

On the question of Greek sensitiveness to scenery, I have already 
touched, and am not willing to enter further, as the subject is one which 
has of late been much thrown open to discussion, only remarking, that 
we shall find it hardly safe to create a distinct line of demarcation 
between a love of the crops, and a love of the land which produces them ; 
the admiration of blue sky, and the happiness arising from the fact that 
it will not rain ; the delight in the Mediterranean, and in its power to 
transport slaves and corn — for these two sets of feelings will always be in 
some degree connected, and one may very well preponderate in a country 
where people, not accustomed to literature and printing, hardly know how 
to express their feelings. I pass on to consider what are the chief points 
of difference in Italian and Greek scenery. First, there is less sea in the 
former ; and, as a general rule (to which almost the only exception is the 
coast of Campania), the sea coast forms in Italy the least striking land- 
scape. The course of the rivers, especially the Anio, the Tiber, and the 
Nar, the slopes of the hills covered with maple, chestnut, and flax, delicate 
undulations, gentle brooks, rich orchards — these are the chief beauties of 
the Italian peninsula. The description of agricultural life, in the second 
Georgic, is just the same that a Greek might have used, but it bears 
clearly in some slight touches the stamp of Latin, not Greek, nature ; and 
the same may be said of the picture of the old cottager Corycius in the 
4th book. Now, if we take on one side the scenes of Greek relaxation 
and enjoyment, which afford us as good a test as any, of their feelings — 
their Dionysia at spring time in honour of the vine, village festivals 
and dancing, with processions, Olympic games, Eleusinian mysteries, 
theatre facing the Bay of Salamis, Corybantian revels on Citha?ron — and 
contrast them with Horace's quiet, but substantial, diimers at Tibur or 
the Sabine farm, with the cool Digentia rolling down the long valley close 
at hand, or the bright Bandusia trickling down the hill among the rocks, 
the sociable feast under the poplars and pines, served up by the farm 
slaves (who themselves might sometimes share in the repast), in sight of 
the flocks too on Lucretilis, and away from the noisy and smoky town, 
but with perhaps a glimpse of it on its seven mighty hills, just to recall 
the sovereignty and the iron will — have we not here an excellent picture 
at once of the scenery of Greece and Italy, and of the prominent difference 
of Greek and Italian characters ? 

Passing over the Germans, where solemn forests and mighty rivers 
seem to have left as great an impression upon their character in the time 
of Tacitus as in our own ; and the Britons of old, insular and conservative 
in habits as hi situation ; we come to the only nation of which we have, if 
possible, clearer knowledge with regard to habits and character, than of 
the Greeks and Romans. And this being, perhaps, the best example of 
the effect of scenery in moulding a nation's habits of thought, we may 
even go so far as to say, that no other cause seems to have had nearly so 
great an influence as this over the Jewish mind. The history of the Jews, 
and the whole thoughts and feelings of the nation, have ever been in a 
special manner bound up with the scenery of Palestine. To us the sub- 



THE INFLUENCE OF SCENEEY 269 

ject is an interesting one. Historical interest is universally connected 
with local associations — not unfrequently dependent upon them. The 
lands, where the history of the world has been in an especial manner 
transacted by chosen races in succession, will ever be full of a singular 
charm in the eyes of those who inherit the birthright of the nations from 
them. From the time when the patriarch first looked in hope and wonder 
on the rich heathen land, to him now a land of promise, not only did 
every mountain and valley and stream imprint themselves on the national 
recollection, and mix themselves with every aspiration for a glorious 
future in store, but they even seem, in the eyes of those who read history, 
as though they were indeed consecrated to them for ever. Even in later 
ages, all that can rouse human passions — revenge, glory, religion — has been 
throughout Europe connected, nor yet is the feeling entirely extinct, with 
the land which the Jew has lost. 

But the nature of the Hebrew mind is one which, more than any 
other, appears to dwell with peculiar delight upon national scenery, and 
find a close relation between the event and the scene. Whether on the 
weary desert to the promised conquest, or rioting in the fruitfulness of 
their treasures, and the hope of years fulfilled ; whether fighting inch by 
inch for its progression and recovery, with the heroism which lifts the 
Maccabees to the level of the glorious of the earth, or, as now, outcast and 
wandering and hoping again ; through every stage of the history, it has 
been the land that has been uppermost in their thoughts — the ' land flow- 
ing with milk and honey,' the land as the garden of God — Sion, Sharon, 
Siloa, Lebanon. Did they preserve their ancient allegiance ? Then no 
feast more hearty than the first-fruits, no sentiment more binding than 
gratitude for the good land. Did they fall into the net of idolatry that 
surrounded them ? Then under every high grove was an altar built. 
Did they recover, and fight, and conquer ? They felt everything in nature 
on their side and against their foes ; the winds and storms helped the 
people of their choice ; ' the stars in their courses fought against Sisera.' 
No lyric of praise but is full of the beauties of the land. No prophecy but 
is stored with lessons and warnings derived from them. And no study, 
we may add, is now so popular, and no investigation so prolific, as that 
which connects the thoughts and words, the history and imagery, of 
Scripture with the very rocks and valleys and springs themselves in 
Palestine. 

An interesting investigation is opened to us by this tendency, so 
peculiarly developed in the Hebrew mind. We are led to consider 
whether, and how far, civilisation is antagonistic to the influence of 
natural scenes, and what effect Christianity has, either in itself or 
regarded as the law of morality. We have seen that the Jew is subject 
most strongly to the influence, so strongly indeed that his case might 
almost be considered alone. But we may, in treating of the Jewish 
mind, confuse several influences. In the first place, the Theocracy placed 
the loyal Jew and the whole nation on a completely different footing from 
the rest of the ancient world. The chief effect was to give a high 



270 EDWABD BOWEN 

objective tendency to the national thoughts. Other nations, more 
civilised, introduced refinements into religion, found few elevated asso- 
ciations in material facts and things, taught spirituality ; and rarely shall 
we find a religion in any way elaborate that is not more spiritual than 
the Jewish. But the genuine internal theocratic sentiment placed even 
things on a higher base than the loftiest ground to which the heathen 
idea could exalt itself. The direct guidance of the Divine Spirit ennobled 
the practical government, the practical life, the ceremony, the rubric, the 
land itself. This elevation of the objective in the mind of the Jew leaves 
the clearest impress upon the literature of the people. Artistic ability 
directed towards what is external in their writings seems to have been, 
not so much out of their power, as to have been felt out of place, useless, 
unnecessary ; and it is the inner subject-matter upon which the attention 
is concentrated. "When other historians would have taken pains to make 
a readable narrative, we find compilations, extracts, land-rolls, catalogues. 
The matter, the truth, is the highest concern. The writer is not so much 
the master of his production as its servant. 1 

This tendency, while it shows in a stronger light how powerful the 
influence of the scenery thus elevated and rendered worthy of a place in 
the sacred books must have been, enables us to judge more accurately of 
the effect of civilisation. Civilisation presents two chief aspects with 
regard to its influence on the nation — subjectivity and morality. The 
Jews were, as I have just endeavoiired to show, almost entirely unsub- 
jective — from the high reasons which the Theocracy gave them, and 
especially so when the theocratic idea was most vivid ; it is therefore 
through the morality which civilisation is usually supposed to bring that 
its influence must work. From a comparison of other nations, however, 
it seems very much more reasonable to assign, as the prime agent, not 
civilisation at all of itself, but Christianity. Nor indeed ought we to be 
surprised to see what professes to be an universal religion bringing those, 
over whom it exercises an influence, into closer connection with nature. 
Nor will it be thought unnatural that this should find a peculiarly strong 
expression in Judaism, the only religion of the ancient world which was 
based upon the recognition of the existence and life of God in relation to 
the existence and life of the creature, and thus itself also contained this 
same feature of universality. On the whole, we are justified in saying — 
as in fact the common experience of all will confirm, and as the etymology 
of the word might almost seem to suggest — that civilisation, in the common 

1 This is nowhere more marked than in the Judaic cosmogony, quite peculiar as 
it is in the main idea of a creation and the absolute derivation of nature from God, 
and opposed to the heathen mythologies of which Pantheism was the highest 
attempt. ' The history of the creation,' it has been remarked, ' has just this 
peculiar distinction, that it handles its theme neither in an abstract form nor from a 
subjective point of view, but in the method of concrete historical treatment, thus 
rendering the abstract and the subjective possible, as to their fundamental idea as 
well as its historical representation, while it disclaims identity with them.' (Haver- 
nick On the Pentateuch, § 15.) 



THE INFLUENCE OP SCENEEY 271 

and limited sense of the word, is of little help (if it be not rather detri- 
mental) to the understanding and appreciation of nature. 1 

Let us now turn from the ancient to the modern world. Of nations, 
comparatively modern, an excellent field for the contrast of scenery, and 
consequent contrast of character — with which, however, physical influ- 
ences have much to do — is found in the southern continent of the New 
World. 

The forests toward the north of this region terminate, somewhat 
abruptly, about the line of the Orinoco Eiver, and are succeeded by a 
totally different species of country. Southward are the central savannahs 
of the Apure and Amazon, the boundless, trackless plains, with not an 
elevation of any kind as far as the eye can reach, stretching out in one 
unbroken landscape for thousands of miles ; few rivers, no trees ; but one 
vast interminable table-land from the Amazon to Buenos Ayres, from 
Pernarnbuco to the Andes. Here there wander the Guachos — wandered 
rather, for civilisation is fast encroaching — the nomad shepherds of South 
America ; savage tribes, indolent in habit, though energetic in desires, 
ferocious, wild, and independent. Even their language is energetic, 
rough, and impassioned. Beyond them, in the far South, are the hardy, 
fierce, and intractable people who inhabit the cold, sterile, pine-clad plains 
of Patagonia. On the north and east of the Orinoco, on the other hand, 
there dwell, in fixed and settled homes, nations, mild, industrious, easily 
governed, and easily moulded by European customs, and devoted to the 
pursuits of agriculture : the tones of their language are mild and 
melodious, and its nature copious and artificial. Now what are the 
pictures of nature amongst which these latter tribes are reared ? Do 
these daily look forth on dismal plains, a blank horizon, and wild track- 
less pampas? We have only to read some traveller's description of the 
country in order to picture to ourselves what the character of the people 
must be. The rivers, clear and rapid, clothed to the very brink with 
luxurious robes of flowers and leaves ; islands, hidden from head to 
foot in creepers of exquisite brilliancy and diversity ; cataracts, in the foam 
of which a thousand varying rainbows ever play ; never a cloud to dim 
the burning sky, never a breeze to fan the motionless leaf; and then the 
forest, with trees two hundred feet, or more, in height ; a growth of 
underwood so thick that the paths of the wild beasts seem like arches cut 
in a solid masonry of leaves ; creepers rising above it nearly to the 
height of the tallest trees ; a rich alluvial mould ; the cries of beasts, and 

1 Cf. Ovid's sentiment : 

' Prisca juvent alios ; ego nunc me denique natum 

Gratulor ; hasc aatas moribus apta meis : 
Non quia — 

Sed quia cultus adest ; nee nostros mansit in annos 
Rusticitas priscis ilia superstes avis. ' 

Where, though rusticitas may simply mean the opposite to urbanitas, the word is 
nevertheless significant. 



272 EDWAED BOWEN 

the song of the birds, never for a moment ceasing — one wild exuberance 
of life and vegetation. This is the home of the nations of the North- 
East. Can we wonder that when we come to the very tropics them- 
selves, to the very richest of the rich landscape, to New Grenada, and the 
Mexican Gulf, there are indolence and luxury, and — in consequence — 
oppression and cruelty and crime ? 

A similar difference might be traced — though in point of geography it 
is not quite so clearly marked — in the northern continent, taking for our 
example, on the one side, the country from the Mississippi westward 
toward the Rocky Mountains ; and on the other, its eastern bank and the 
rich tracts, noisy with life, and luxuriant with vegetable growth, which 
extend to the lower Alleghany range. In fact, throughout the United 
States of America, the well-known distinctions of character proceed 
exactly in accordance with the nature of the country. In the East and 
North the healthy English scenery of Vermont and New Hampshire, with 
sandy promontories and granite rocks, the fir, the beech, the laurel, and 
the clearings of the forest pointing to the hand of industry ; and the 
population sober, cheerful, money-making, inventive, and democratic. 
Thence to the land of the palm, the plane, and the poplar, the warmer 
district about the Alleghany Hills, Virginia, and the Oarolinas, an inter- 
mediate race in point of disposition ; and after we have passed the blue 
hills of Tennessee, still keeping southwards, east of the Mississippi, and 
entered the region of prolific life, the clear rivers and lovely valleys of 
Georgia and Alabama, clothed with magnolia, rhododendron, and azalia — 
here, we find equal Anglo-Saxon enterprise, it is true, but persor i 
indolence, extreme pride, fierceness, and luxury, are the chief features of 
the disposition. 

With regard to the feature of close proximity on these alternations 
of character dependent on the phases of nature, another no less remark- 
able field of observation would be afforded by Asia, were it not that other 
causes combine to render the Asiatic character more uniform. There, 
nevertheless, tribe after tribe appears to change with the soil and climate 
— where the elevated steppes of Tartary and the arid deserts of Arabia 
touch, as it were, the fertile plains of Mesopotamia and Armenia ; the 
orderly Chinese are harassed by the restless mountaineers of Thibet ; and 
the rocky home of the ruthless Afghan borders on the rice fields of the 
patient Hindoo. 

In Europe the Swiss character is one which has always been appealed 
to as presenting, more than any other, a reflex of the features of 
the country. That independence, energy, domesticity, and cheerfulness 
are the natural productions of the mountains, lakes, and glaciers, has 
been usually taken for granted; and Switzerland is the prominent 
type of the influence. But it has been lately said, that as a matter of 
fact the mass of the Swiss really care little for their scenery; partly, 
perhaps, that they are too accustomed to its beauties, partly that 
they have no appreciation of what is usually considered the pic- 
turesque. Certainly the influence might very well be unconsciously 



THE INELUENCE OF 8CENEEY 273 

exercised, and their recognition of it is not indispensable in order to 
enable us to form a judgment ' upon it. But unless a large number of 
instances and a comprehensive view of their history were adduced in 
support of the view, we are hardly driven to the hypothesis. It is true — 
as all proverbs in some measure are— that familiarity induces indifference ; 
but it is equally true that indifference in such a case is not the natural 
feeling, but is imposed upon a subsoil of real feeling by the force of cir- 
cumstance — in this case the circumstance of remaining long in one spot. 
If we wish for a proof of the effect which such scenery can produce on 
great intellects, and what attraction it has for them, we have the cluster 
of illustrious names which are connected with the shores of the Lake of 
Geneva — Calvin and Knox, Voltaire and Gibbon, Rousseau, Stael, Byron, 
Kemble. 1 But change of scenery (as of occupation) is good, and even 
essential, for the mind ; and this, being simply a law of nature, has no 
particular reference to an individual form of country. Motion through 
pleasant scenes certainly produces different sensations from a quiet 
enjoyment of them, both being good ; whether the effect of the former be 
a complacent admiration limited to the individual himself, or that 
exquisite feeling of universal benevolence, which can only be imparted by 
love, opium, or a walk before breakfast. 

That the effect of their scenery, however, upon the Swiss is a conscious 
one, we have the testimony of every traveller who has written upon the 
country, and every historian who has searched their annals ; nor is their 
history deficient in such proofs from the time when the men of Schwytz 
first resisted the imperial power, for their ' pastures, hills, and plains,' to 
the late wars when the ' Banz des Vaches ' was utterly prohibited the 
army, because the simple pastoral air induced such home-sickness that 
the soldiers deserted from their ranks. 

It is usually supposed — at all events usually stated — that in Holland 
there is no scenery. Nevertheless, whenever the Dutchman looks abroad 
upon the country, there must be something to meet the eye. Let us con- 
sider what this will usually be. A multitude of corn fields and grazing 
meadows in about equal proportion in the first place ; cattle in proportion 
to the meadows ; ancient windmills ; long straight canals, bordered by 
orderly rows of trees, a towing-path, with mud banks, and in the distance, 
barges, gules, with yellow sails, and collier hoys, proper ; and this being 
all, his eye will naturally fall back upon the warm farmhouse, built as 

1 The claim of the mountains to religious, literary, and artistic pre-eminence is 
discussed — and, with regard to the two last points, satisfactorily — in the last chapter 
of Euskin's fourth volume. With regard to religion, his remarks on the individual 
sentiment are hardly borne out by the facts with regard to the national creed, so 
that we have less a test of the influence historically, than an example of its modify- 
ing power, which is dependent on the nature of the belief already existing. In the 
one case the matter is supplied, and in the other the form. And his view of the 
harshness of Northern art is far from being of universal application. Thus contrast 
the Hindoo and the Eussian. I have above endeavoured to trace the difference 
another way. 



274 EDWAED BOWEN 

securely, comfortably, and unostentatiously, as farmhouses in Holland and 
England only are. The only variety will lie in memory ; and this will 
probably be the recollection of last week's visit to the town, with its timber 
yards and great wooden wharfs. Or if he live near the sea, he will look — 
with half fear, half pride, perhaps — at the wonderful works of man which 
shut out the terrible ocean ; embankments, where one day's intermission 
of care, one foot of encroachment unheeded, may swamp a province, and 
broad lakes where the waves have long since claimed their territory again. 
And with this to look at every day, what can the Dutch character be, 
but patience, order, industry, vigilance, frugality, itself ? 

Mores, quos ante gerebant, 
' Nunc quoque habent, parcurnque genus, patiensque laborum, 
Queesitique tenax, et quae qusesita reservent.' 

We shall not find the fire and energy of the French or English character ; 
no lofty spirit, no high aspirations ; but honesty, freedom, religion, sys- 
tem, humanity, love of home. And so, too, the heroism of Holland is the 
heroism of constancy ; and the sieges of Haarlem and Leyden and 
the repulse of Louis XIV. are the most brilliant passages in the narrative 
of the many vicissitudes of the nation. And when, after long and patient 
suffering under the domination of the French Eepublic, and injuries that 
would have exasperated any other people into madness, the Government 
was restored, how noble, and at the same time how worthy of the inhabi- 
tants of Holland, is the spectacle which meets us. No wholesale massacre, 
no vindictive punishments inflicted, no tear shed, save of joy ; simply 
the Government restored, the old system once more set on foot. 

Of the influence of our own scenery on ourselves, it is difficult to 
speak. Certainly the influence is increasing. Since the day when the 

sentiment — 

The proper study of mankind is man — 

was first clearly enunciated by Pope, it has daily been less and less believed 
that it is the only proper study. The poetry of Wordsworth and Cowper 
had, no doubt, much to say to this change of feeling ; and the modern 
poets still do much to sustain it, and, even now, Pope is less read than 
Sir Walter Scott, Byron than Tennyson. Perhaps, as we noticed above, 
a better acquaintance with Christianity, and a higher tone of morality, 
contribute to increase the influence of natural scenes ; and in proportion 
as a nation becomes more and more imbued with Christian principles, it 
would seem to follow as a fit consequence that nature should possess in 
its eyes more and more interest. The material will never be despised by 
one who finds in the existing world a close connection with the spiritual ; 
or are we not even right in saying, that the very lesson of Christmas 
itself may teach the world that the material is not necessarily evil ? At 
all events, whether or not we sympathise with nature, do we not in 
almost every word of greater than ordinary feeling call upon nature to 
sympathise with us ? Is not the ' pathetic fallacy ' bound up in our 



THE INFLUENCE OF SCENEEY 275 

minds indissolubly ? And must not, again, almost every action of more 
than ordinary interest have a scene of its own ? Have Salamis and 
Waterloo no charm in our eyes ? Have Bethany and Nazareth no vivid 
interest ? And the case is the same if we come to our own experience. 
We think with strong and intense feeling of the chamber where some 
friend died ; the house where this or that fate was pronounced ; the tree, 
or bridge, or door, where one companion left us for ever, or where we met 
some other for the first time. The scene is as well remembered as the 
fact ; so that even in imagination this is so ; and the most skilfully drawn 
picture often pleases less, because the accompanying features fail to 
correspond with the ideas we had formed before. And often, too, it is the 
scene that forms half the interest of an episode , as Tennyson has many 
times shown. We care little for a dying swan ; but when that swan is 
dying lonely, gloomily, at evenfall, and breathing out its last song in 
misery only to the dark pools of the Mseander, then we do care much, and 
wonder whether Ovid can have seen it himself. 

It is partly this association with events, partly a pure son-like feeling 
of affection, that contributes mainly to the sentiment which, on a small 
scale, we call love of home, on a larger, love of country. This abstract 
affection is perhaps one of the highest points of mental refinement. Love 
of a thing is a human instinct ; love of an idea is a human instinct too, but 
an elevated one ; and its possibility a consoling reflection, for it assures us of 
its own reality. ' Tell me, O dear youth, do men love those things which 
are, or those things which are not ? ' And therefore the passion is also a 
good one, and it is our duty to help others to attain to it, being well assured 
that the individual mind prospers from enlargement of its scope, and all 
from fellow-feeling and community of direction, and that national life can 
never flourish without a large measure of national self-consciousness. 

Nor must we forget some more solemn influences of scenery. The 
gorgeous colours and indescribable distance of a summer sunset, the best 
and most elevating picture of the infinity which, in great scenery, is not 
merely a form of speech or custom-sanctioned method of abbreviating 
the expression of a system of feelings hard to describe, but a real and 
almost tangible truth ; the deep conscience-suggesting silence of the fields 
and woods, and this more impressive perhaps than the thunder — there 
was silence in heaven when the final seal was opened ; the wholesome 
unostentatious repose, which can hardly exist elsewhere ; the confirmation 
we somehow derive from the contemplation of nature of that most 
precious possession of modern philosophy, that of which Protestantism is 
but the expression in theological language, the absoluteness of individual 
existence ; these are some of the things which help the mind. And the 
mind needs the help, and is moreover adequate to receive it. For high 
and good as nature is, our souls can nearly reach it even now ; and in 
this it is true, as it is in climbing the hillside — it is good to consider that 
most, which we have just not attained to. And if we penetrate one step 
deeper still into the inner life of nature, another and more mysterious 
sympathy meets us there ; for we learn, and need not be slow to believe, 

t 2 



276 EDWAED BOWEN 

that Nature herself, somehow, waits upon man, and that upon some 
glorious future development of his destinies is dependent the ' earnest 
expectation of the creature.' 

In truth, he who loves nature must indeed have an element of good 
in him; and none but holy influences may ever arise from the inter- 
course. There walked once, the story says, by the side of a river, a man 
armed for the mmder of another, and by chance half an horn 1 must elapse 
before the opportunity came. For half an hour, at noon, on a summer's 
day and amid the song of the birds, the murderer lay in the meadow 
among the flowers. Half an hour of love, and sunlight, and quiet beauty 
pitted against malice and cruelty. In the end, he who lay there went 
home again, subdued only by the holiness of nature — almost maddened 
by the struggle, but nevertheless subdued. This then is the best study 
of nature — without disrespect to botany — to lie among flowers. And how 
innocent and wholly good is the enjoyment ; and how different the 
eternal outlines from the passing fashions of other things, and how full 
of warnings to be earnest, and to trust in simple earnestness ! And here 
is the crown of the good we have from the fields ; that nowhere else but 
under the blue sky abroad have we ever singleness of purpose, neither in 
art, nor study, nor the human heart. And what a fall it is from the 
reality to the fancy ! How much the view, which our eyes see, is better to 
the moral sense, than that which the brain creates ! It is landscape 
painting alone which can avoid the difficulty, which is the great problem 
of the artistic philosophy of the day — how that which is evil can ever 
fitly enter into a work of Art. 1 And now, accordingly, in our landscapes 
we are beginning to feel ourselves more and more driven towards truth ; 
we reject conventional ideas, and copy the trees and clouds as they are ; 
not, as the popular author 2 says, introducing as much beauty as is 
consistent with truth, but as much fact as our limited understandings 
render us capable of harmonising with our limited views of beauty. 

But we have not yet exhausted our tests of the hold which scenery 
has upon various national minds. We have, in the first place, another 
influence at work upon nations, with which we can safely compare it. 
This may be illustrated by a now well-known analogy. We are appalled 
by the consideration of our smallness and the smallness of our world, 
when we hear of the vastness of the universe ; but we are, in some 
measure, restored by reflecting that the scale of man's insignificance is 
the same hi reference to time as to space. So also the effect upon a 
people, which the recollection of their past history has, will help us to 
appreciate better, though hardly to express in words, the effect of the 
other cause which we have been considering. Like it, the history of the 
p as t — of glories, and reverses, and vicissitudes, and abuses, and reforms, 
of countrymen good and great, of national institutions foimded, and, with 

1 Eio, Poetry of Christian Art. 

2 Euskin. 



THE INFLUENCE OF SCENEEY 277 

them, the seeds of decay — these are all before the mind, represented 
always if not always vivid, at hand if not apparent. 

And the two influences are of very much the same kind. There is the 
same solemn earnest presence, not intrusive, but still real and indisput- 
able. And it is not the less so because it is not always, or often, appealed 
to. The Swiss boatman does not think much about the beauty of his 
mountains, nor does the English yeoman often fall back on "Waterloo ; 
but it is good for each that each is there ; and when appealed to, it seldom 
fails of effect. 

"We may see in yet another way, if we choose to examine, how this 
influence acts. Physically, action and reaction are equal and opposite ; 
morally, they are similar and reproductive. Let us examine, then, in 
one or two instances, whether the creation of scenery, where that is 
possible, answers to the character in different nations or no. And here I 
purposely abstain from taking into account the creation of scenery upon 
canvas in various schools of art, having come to the conclusion that, how- 
ever interesting might be the comparison of celebrated masters of painting 
belonging to different countries with regard to the background of their 
pieces, and however we might seem at first sight to approximate to a 
general law, yet that this is so dependent upon the particular taste of the 
artist, upon his age, and the composition of the piece, that we should be 
hardly justified in proceeding to general results from the instances, 
especially with such small materials as it is possible to obtain for the 
inquiry. I may just remark that the increase of landscape painters and 
of the estimation in which they are held in England, compared with their 
decrease in France, may possibly be a slight indication of the tendencies 
of the age in both countries. An apology is almost necessary for descend- 
ing from the high ground of art to a subject so simple as that of 
national gardening ; but this, in reality, is an excellent standard by which 
to estimate the effect which the scenery of the country has produced, not 
only upon the individual, but the nation. 

First, we have the Italian style. Modern Italy is a country in which 
the influence of strictly natural scenery is not much felt, but the pictu- 
resque finds itself associated with art and humanity. The Italian, of the 
North especially, gazes habitually on towers and palaces, statues and 
cathedrals ; and even nature itself is more largely moulded by the hand 
of man than in any other land. This artificial character is manifested 
in the Italian style of gardening (or Italo-French, our neighbours having 
borrowed it) to a degree at which every true Englishman must shudder. 
We have one or more terraces, usually supported by elaborate parapet-walls ; 
on the copings of these will be found displayed vases of beauty and research ; 
in fit and proper places are jets d'eau and ponds of symmetrical shape, 
and here and there a creeper endeavours to climb up a stone erection 
built for the purpose — barbarous thought ! — not the creeper for the wall, 
but the wall for the creeper. Every bed is of the most elegant arrange- 
ment, and, if possible, rectangular ; around them are box edgings, high 



278 EDWAED BOWEN 

indeed, but painfully neat. A tree or two, but not over many, will here 
and there be judiciously disposed with a view to effect, and outside, 
perhaps, parterres evidencing an intricate knowledge of geometry. Such 
monuments of cultivated taste are the public gardens of Brussels, for 
example ; whether in them, or in the Great Sahara, it would be pleasanter 
to pass one's days, is a matter of doubt. 

Next, the Dutch style, which we might guess from the character. 
Not quite so much elegance, no terraces, no architecture, but, if possible, 
more geometry, with a little of what we might almost imagine humour, 
but which is in reality decorum ; a clear eye to comfort, and a kind of 
clumsy homeliness. Formality and rectangularity are at their height in 
this garden ; square and oblong flower beds, each devoted to one flower 
alone, abut on arcades of severely clipped yew or holly ; hexagonal fish 
ponds are commanded by prismatic summer-houses. Even the poplars, 
row by row, are trained into pyramids, save only where, in excess of 
zeal, or it may be near some favourite point of view, one triply painted 
trunk is made to support a square-cut mass of foliage. And then there is 
the terrible uniformity — the same by which whitewashed walls are said to 
drive prisoners mad. We long to have an unexpected change ; we would 
give anything to be astonished, surprised — but no I There is the dismal 
and crushing certainty that, knowing the shape of one row or bed, we 
must infallibly know also what is the shape of the contiguous one. But 
yet the quaint antiquity of the whole, and the humorous clipped yew 
trees, almost reconcile us to the prospect. Such is the Dutch style of 
gardening. 

In England we prefer, roughly speaking, to imitate nature. We allow 
a little variety. We take a little instruction from our own hills and fields. 
The English eye is not very sensitive as regards colour ; nor, for our own 
landscapes, has it need to be ; nor do we usually devote much attention 
to colour in our gardens, neglecting the flowers for the sake of the shrubs 
and the general effect, which we wish to be the same as that of the 
beautiful parts of English country scenery. Accordingly we expend little 
labour on straightening the gravel walks ; we give it instead to the rock- 
work and the creepers. We have many trees to give an aspect of solidity, 
arbours for comfort, great gates and walls for protection. In short, if in 
our own gardens English character is not to be seen, it is hopeless to look 
for it anywhere. 

I feel loth to quit the subject of this essay without one or two remarks 
of present application, which the inquh'y seems to suggest. We are 
becoming more and more practical every day, and usually we glory in so 
becoming. Civilisation is looked upon not as a means but an end ; the 
study of nature, not an end but a means. And in the pursuit of truth 
the same spirit is shown ; and to discover is placed on a far higher level 
than to represent. Here therefore the calm face of Nature, which speaks 
to us by the mere looking on her, might do much towards restoring the 
balance of the mind. The man who spends all his life and energies in 



THE INFLUENCE OF SCENEEY 279 

work, and works well and successfully too, may yet die without having 
learnt enough. 

That low man seeks a little thing to do, 

Sees it, and does it ; 
This high man, with a great thing to pursue, 
Dies ere he knows it. 

And it does not necessarily follow that the effect of science and of its 
pursuit is bad ; on the contrary, the knowledge of nature and form of 
things is a great help towards receiving the lessons they teach ; and here, 
as universally, the cultivation of taste gives the power. But we must not 
forget that the cultivation is for the sake of the power ; that the lesson 
taught is, after all, the great thing. And so, too, in our action on others. 
He has done most who establishes a truth ; but he has done much who 
impresses a principle. 

And this leads us towards another subject which appears to be forced 
upon us by the consideration of the effect of scenery on a nation's 
character — the education of the people by means of the senses. We 
acknowledge its utility with regard to ourselves, but till lately have some- 
what neglected it, in the case of the lower orders of the people. We may 
feel some jealousy of Crystal Palaces and weekly holidays ; but we should 
not feel too much. There are many things we can never teach by books ; 
the benefit of goodness is one of them; the cultivation of thought is 
another ; and here nature will help us. And perhaps through the senses 
it will be easier and more acceptable to impart the teaching we desire ; 
and not merely instruct but educate the people. In short, we may reach 
the character by the eye and ear ; we may learn ourselves, and make our 
people learn, as the child learns— first by his picture book, then by the 
garden and meadows, then by the great world around him. 



280 EDWARD BOWEN 



II 



THE FOECE OP HABIT 

CONSIDEEED AS AN AEGUMENT TO PROVE THE MOEAL 
GOVEBNMENT OF MAN BY GOD l 

Ita dico, Lucili, sacer intra nos spiritus sedet, malorum bonorumque nostrorum 
observator et custos. Hie prout a nobis tractatus est, ita nos ipse tractat. 

Seneca, Ep. sli. 

I. Habit, the Faculty oe Peopeety 

An inquiry into the nature of the laws which connect the faculties of 
man with his duties, and indicate a special adaptation of the one to the 
other, is exposed to two considerable difficulties. One, that it is almost 
impossible distinctly to classify the influences at work upon the human 
will, to define accurately what part of the constitution may be considered 
as bearing directly upon the moral nature, and what part only mediately ; 
and hence to distinguish between subject and object in any relation that 
may be considered. The other difficulty is this : that we are liable to 
serious obstacles, if not manifold errors, in the attempt to recognise 
which portion of the phraseology employed by the sacred writers to illus- 
trate these relations is to be accepted as dogmatic, and which to be 
understood as merely a system of convenient and intelligible symbols. 
That there is in the Epistles, for example, a basis of positive teaching 
with regard to the mental economy of man, and the relations of each part 
of it to the Divine influences, cannot be doubted ; but the more we examine 
this, the more we shrink from asserting at what point such teaching 
ceases, and the current of apostolic doctrine unites with the kindred 
stream of independent research. 

We have, then, two cautions to be observed in entering upon the sub- 
ject. We must not venture to consider as solved the problems upon which 
philosophy is still at work ; and we must not claim too hastily corrobora- 
tions of metaphysical results from the words used by the sacred writers. 
But it is well to remember that we have also encouragements. The his- 
tory of man is no less obscure than his nature ; but progress can be made 
in the knowledge of both ; and, if rightly regarded, success in the unfold- 
ing of history is no small encouragement to advance in the other direction 
also. For in both studies the possibility of arriving at truth is of the 
same order; and when, in considering man's moral and intellectual 
nature, we are discouraged by the reflection that no result arrived at by 

1 The Burney Prize Essay, 1858. 



THE FOECB OF HABIT 281 

a priori reasoning can be surely depended upon, and yet that no result 
arrived at otherwise than by such reasoning seems worthy of the great- 
ness of the subject ; and that when we lay down anything as discovered, 
the infinite nature of this, as of every abstract question, seems to demand 
that it should not be thus only, rather in the opposite way ; — we may 
derive no small assurance from remembering that the same may be said 
of historical research ; and that in it, nevertheless, there are undoubted 
facts, particular and one-sided, which are distinctly presented to our 
understanding, and must certainly be received and believed. 

Considering, then, that in such investigations results are both possible 
and useful, I propose in the first place to inquire into the nature of habit 
as a property or faculty of human nature. This will involve an inquiry 
as to whether it is partial or general, and whether variable or uniform in 
kind ; whether accordingly it is to be considered as a mere quality, or has 
rather the appearance of a law specially imposed for a designed end. 
Without fully entering into the important question of design, we shall 
infer its application in the present instance from the evidence that we 
find. The next attempt will be, to expand this law so discovered in the 
human constitution into a general law of nature ; of which if it appears 
that the law of habit is a department, it will follow that the results arrived 
at with regard to the part will have a further reference to the whole ; and 
it will then only be necessary to apply our results to the conceptions we 
succeed in forming of the moral government of God upon earth, in order 
to perceive the bearings of the faculty of habit as regards the legislative 
and judicial functions of that government. The conclusion will be dependent 
for its logical force upon the first portion of our investigation, and for its 
breadth and largeness of application on the expansion which we may 
succeed in giving it in the second. 

Habit is the effect of a species of memory upon the will and feelings. 
It may be conscious or unconscious ; it may be positive or negative ; may 
tend to stimulate or to deaden. But it is questionable whether there is 
an element of the human constitution in which its influence is not felt. 
The action of yesterday on to-day, not only in tangible results, but in the 
modifications which each mental or physical phase reflects upon ourselves, 
seems to run through the whole course of our natiire. 

Now, if we were to consider this influence simply as universal in our 
nature, without further inquiring into the various kinds of action which it 
involves ; if we were to be content with the avowal that such an opera- 
tion is constantly manifested, and neglected to examine its different 
aspects ; we should have indeed a ground of much interesting reflection, 
and an occasion for a sermon large and suggestive, but we should fail to 
observe the dignity and beauty of the law which the faculty involves. 
We should not see that through its whole action can be traced a twofold 
character, which, regarded as interesting for its own sake, or as illustra- 
tive also of the method of the Divine government of the world, seems 
abundantly worthy of a more careful study. 

We will in the first place, then, direct our attention to the physical 



282 EDWAED BOWEN 

frame of man, and trace in it the operation of habit ; and will afterwards 
turn to his moral nature, and observe whether similar results are there 
found. Now the body may be considered, generally, as capable of action 
and passion. With regard to some things it is affected from within, with 
regard to others from without. One set of agencies are dependent upon 
the will, the other upon sensation. What, then, is the effect of habit 
upon the former of these two classes ? Obviously that of strengthening 
the powers of action. We need not travel far for illustration. The child 
that is trained to outdoor exercise will have a more active frame than 
that which is kept at home. The man who plies the ferry-boat soon 
learns to ply it without wearying. The mother who carries the infant 
can carry it more easily than its father. Thus on physical actions which 
involve the will, the action of habit is positive. We must remember, 
however, that there are those which do not immediately involve the will. 
Some, of course, are purely unconscious from the beginning, and of these 
we need not speak, since they are evidently remote from the province of 
habit, and in fact form an integral portion of our bodily constitution ; 
such, for instance, are the beating of the heart and the action of the 
lungs. But there are others — not, indeed, according to the chief authori- 
ties, divided from these by a very broad line x — which, though unconscious, 
yet depend originally upon consciousness ; actions in which the force of 
habit is most evidently seen and most often observed. It is clear that 
the effect in the case of these is similar to that in the case of conscious 
actions — tending, namely, to confirm the operative power, or, as we shall 
call it, positive. 

The physical feelings, on the other hand, seem to indicate a directly 
contrary effect of habit. Here we have not, of course, the subdivision of 
conscious or unconscious ; since consciousness is the essence of feeling ; 
and it is in fact upon this consciousness, as we saw in a different way 
just now, that the force of habit acts. Is it, then, a positive or negative 
effect ? D oes it stimulate or blunt the f eelings ? The common language 
of men certainly points in this latter direction : we speak of a sufferer 
inured to pain, a palate dead to sweets. And all our experience confirms 
this language. It may indeed be argued that the hand of a blind person, 
accustomed to rely for almost all perceptions on the touch, acquires a far 
more sensitive discrimination of shape than before, and an ear versed in 
music will detect varieties in tone which to another will appear not to 
exist ; but it is essential to observe that in neither of these cases, nor in 
any involving active discrimination, have we to deal with the pure sense 
of feeling ; in the second of the two instances, indeed, the will is largely 
involved ; and into both the judgment enters, and removes them from the 
domain of mere sensation. This faculty of judgment we shall have to 
consider hereafter ; but here we must distinctly remember that in such 
cases as the above the phenomenon is not so much the repeated action of 
the same things upon the nerves, as of the same nerves on the reflecting 
powers. If two persons, for example, were to listen for a continued time 
1 I allude to the only explanation, I believe, of the phenomenon of sighing, &c. 



THE FOBCE OE HABIT 283 

to the most exquisite music, each would probably have been pleased at 
first ; but if one applied his powers to the understanding and appreciation 
of it, made it a study, exercised his energies upon it, while the other was 
content each day to hear it, and no more, habit would with the first have 
developed the keenness of hearing and judgment of sounds, while the ear 
of the other would be less awake than before to the beauty of the notes 
he heard. 

These results, which we have obtained in the consideration of the 
human physical frame, are exposed to an objection of the following kind. 
It is useless, we may be told, to subdivide, if a subject is complete with- 
out it ; if a comprehensive view is truthful, it is the best. And all the 
phenomena of habit may be resolved into the fact that it renders more 
easy any operation or affection ; that it accustoms the frame to the 
action, and brings the effect each time more home to the individual. 
Why, then, it may be asked, should we look upon effects as contrary 
which are really one and the same ? In order to show that such a view 
would lose in truth what it gained in comprehensiveness, we may be 
excused a short digression upon the facts which have of late years been 
brought to light by those who have especially studied the nervous system 
of the body. To Sir Charles Bell we are indebted for one of the most 
brilliant discoveries ever made upon the subject — that, namely, of the 
different parts of the system upon which motion and sensation depend. 
He was led to his investigations partly from considering the distribution 
of certain nerves, partly from cases in which the power of moving a 
member of the body is lost, sensation being retained ; or the reverse. 
The results at which he arrived, and which subsequent inquiries have 
confirmed and illustrated, are of the following nature. The powers of 
both kinds which a limb possesses have been long known to depend upon 
the connection of the spinal nerves which enter it. Hence, by dividing 
these, motion and sensation are destroyed. But it is found on tracing 
these to their origin that each of them is composed of two parts, one of 
which proceeds from the anterior column of the spinal cord, the other 
from the posterior column. If the former of these be cut, the power of 
motion in the part supplied by the nerve is extinguished ; as is also sen- 
sation, by dividing the posterior root. In a newly killed animal, when 
the posterior or sensitive roots of the nerves are irritated, no effect is 
produced ; but when the anterior or motive roots are similarly touched, 
the limbs which are connected with these nerves are thrown into violent 
convulsions. Again, the motive nerves are extremely various in their 
characters, the amount of consciousness or will required for the action of 
the parts varying according to the tract of the spinal cord from which 
they spring ; the sensitive, on the other hand, are in all probability single 
and uniform. Now, when we find these various characters of nerve 
corresponding with the most perfect nicety to the various functions of the 
human body ; and when we see that they are throughout divided into 
these two distinct classes, is it possible to shut our eyes to the facts of 
physical sciences, and refuse to acknowledge a twofold application of the 



284 EDWAED BOWEN 

faculty of habit applied to the double functions of which our frame is 
capable ? Is it possible to call the operations of the law uniform, when 
we have seen that they are contrary in direction, and have for their 
objects two clearly separate kingdoms of the nervous system ? 

Let us now turn to the metaphysical action of habit ; and since we 
may here, as well as above, easily subdivide mental and moral phenomena 
into two classes, those of active and passive organisation, we will begin 
by considering the first of these, and inquire whether similar results to 
the foregoing are obtained. We have, then, before us mental operations 
and moral energies. As before, it will not be necessary to enlarge upon 
a demonstration that the active faculties are strengthened by use in those 
subjects upon which study is employed ; or that the moral instincts, the 
more they are called into exercise, will the more be invigorated and con- 
firmed. No sermon, no seminary, but is witness to the truth of these 
facts. But as, in the case of the body, there was conscious and uncon- 
scious action, so also in the higher nature of man. He has his moral 
habits ; he has his received beliefs. Neither of these can be considered as 
directly dependent upon the will. When, in his famous Edinburgh 
lecture, delivered many years ago, Lord Brougham, speaking on the sub- 
ject of religious toleration, went so far as to assert the total unconscious- 
ness, or rather metaphysical isolation, of belief, he either forgot or dis- 
allowed the fact that, as unconscious physical actions are engendered by 
conscious ones, so the will does act indirectly, though strongly, upon 
opinion. When his adversaries, in then eagerness to attach responsi- 
bility to faith, actually subjoined the latter to the province of conscious 
will, they did violence to the most obvious facts of mental anatomy ; 
neglecting the analogy of physical organisation, which entirely separates 
some part of action, at all events, from the power of reasoning energy. 
This whole analogy is most interesting to observe. 'Whether indeed we 
may carry it out to the utmost, whether we are to admit of any originally 
unconscious motions of the mind, and, in the kindred province of morality, 
allow the existence of any distinct moral instincts independently of the 
mere instinct of morality as a law, is not within the province of such an 
essay as this to determine ; but this we may say, that the analogy extends 
very far indeed ; and that, whether we recognise its ultimate application 
or not, we have, exclusive of its support, abundant evidence of a similar 
strengthening effect of habit with regard to the active parts of man's 
moral and intellectual structure. 

For an example to illustrate the gradual effect of habit on the active 
mental powers, let us take the case of the formation in men of general 
views of life and of the constitution of the world. At first, when the 
receptive faculties — mere observation, that is — are still vigorous, and the 
active faculties, though strong, are not yet attuned, as afterwards 
happens, by the exercise of all in then turn, there ensues a quick and im- 
patient induction as regards the logical methods, a rapid and premature 
appreciation of universal laws, a one-sided comprehensiveness, if those 
views may be so called which are characterised by generalisations some- 



THE FOECB OF HABIT 285 

times plausible but always hasty, and deductions from these often re- 
pugnant to facts, and often inconsistent. And hence in the philosophy 
of younger men, views of order are conspicuous ; wide surveys of facts little 
perhaps understood, but eagerly grasped at for the sake of the total 
arrangement ; and a dissatisfaction with everything which does not 
square with the system and fill a definite place in the outwardly harmo- 
nious whole. But the effects of life are to reverse this process. As 
time advances the powers of observation become, with reference to each 
object of a class, less clear ; inductions are seldom made, too seldom in 
fact for a constant appreciation of external events ; but the whole active 
faculties being together strengthened and enlarged by use, there accrues 
a solidity to the few general views now formed, and a practical strength 
and stability to the deductions, the logical analysis, the more narrow 
laws, as it would seem, which are characteristic of the practised philosophy 
of older men. 

The passive faculties of the mind may perhaps be summed up in the 
word ' affections.' The mental affections — fear, hope, sorrow, and the like 
— correspond to the sensations of the body. Such an affection as hatred 
will of course be included in the list, if we are only on our guard against 
an ambiguity which may arise from confounding the mere mental sensa- 
tion with the moral energy. In all these it is almost proverbial that use 
deadens the feeling. Fear subsides ; hope sickens ; delight palls ; all the 
passive faculties, in a word, are blunted, for each particular object, by 
time and exercise. Sic visum auperis : we find the law. That the effect 
is for the benefit of the race, none will question : that it proceeds as 
plainly from a distinct emphatic ordinance as any other part of the con- 
stitution of our nature, few will be so bold as to deny. 1 

And indeed that this distinction of the result of action points to a 
moral end, was not obscurely hinted when the foundations of Christianity 
were laid. When people after people attributed degradation to some 
outward touch, when the whole world had decided with one voice that 
certain ceremonies from without possessed a purifying and moral power, 
and had very nearly forgotten that it was not these in reality that were 
under the dominion of the moral will, that true uncleanness and guilt were 
the offspring of the daily life, and had their roots within — how pregnant 
and how forcible is the great dictum which St. Mark records ! ' Hearken 
unto Me every one of you, and understand : there is nothing from without 
a man, that entering into him can defile him.' Then indeed if any man 
had ears to hear, he must have heard. ' That which cometh out of the 
man ' — the long list of evil thoughts and deeds — ' all these come from 
within, and defile the man.' No truer morality, no truer philosophy 
could a nation of Formalists be taught. They knew well, they felt deeply, 
that the will was inherently superior to the sense ; they now learnt that 
it was also more potent, and more abiding in its action. And those who 

1 This subject is drawn out by Butler in the Analogy I. ch. v. in a somewhat 
different argument, though tending to a similar purpose. 



286 BDWAED BOWEN 

had been accustomed to consider moral actions as sometimes, in an in- 
direct way, reacting upon the doer, might hence have learnt that this, 
which they called the reaction, was in truth the great, chief, and direct 
action ; that the outward manifestation of the deed was, of the two, the 
minor and the more remote. 

The results to which our inquiry thus far has led us may be briefly 
stated thus. The force of habit extends over all parts of the human 
organisation, but affects them in different ways. It is not a mere property 
of the constitution, with a single action, and bearing no special marks of 
adaptation to distinguish it from other faculties or properties ; but by a 
clearly defined law its influences are separable into two classes according 
to the sphere of its operation ; the effect being to stimulate the active 
powers of the mind and body, and weaken and deaden those which are 
only passive and extrinsically affected. We have not only a general 
property ; we have a specific law pointing to adaptation and design. 

II. Habit, the Universal Law 

Entering upon the second part of this subject with much hesitation, 
but much conviction also of the truth it involves, it is important that we 
form at the outset a clear idea of the inquiry to be instituted. We know 
that the force of habit is great, and universal among men. We see also 
from more particular examination that it occurs under such phases as to 
lead us to conclude that it is governed by special, individual, and particular 
laws. We have now to ascertain whether some corresponding property 
extends also beyond the human race, and is visible in the wide domain of 
irrational nature. And here it will be obviously unnecessary to search 
for a similar twofold division of its effects. Our knowledge of the world 
around us is too small as yet to admit of much success in an examination 
of the kind. And yet it will sometimes be found that, when such tests 
seem applicable, they do seem also to point in the direction indicated 
above. Here and there we shall be able to notice such an instance ; 
meanwhile the existence of a universal property analogous to human 
habit is the object of our more immediate search. 

The identity of the laws of space and of time is constantly receiving 
some new and wonderful proofs. The researches of foreign meta- 
physicians, and, of late years, the study of science, have combined to bring 
to light the extent of this important principle. In measurement, in 
universal capability of logical employment, in almost every conceivable 
way, time and space are akin. Now, if there is one law with regard to 
space which is more than any other famous for its intrinsic beauty, the 
celebrated process of its discoveiw, and its consequent entire reception, 
it is that of ' universal attraction.' May we look for the property we are 
seeking in an aualogous law universal throughout nature, that of temporal 
coherence ? 

Every particle of matter affects, firstly and chiefly, its immediate 
neighbours, then, less strongly, those more remote. To some extent, 



THE FOECE OF HABIT 287 

each particle of matter attracts the whole universe. Similarly, may we 
not say that every incident happening in a moment of time (for incident 
in time corresponds to matter in space) affects its immediate con- 
sequent, and again, less powerfully, the entire process of the world's 
action ? Thus far this principle nearly resembles the canon, now trite, 
that, as the ' Saint's Tragedy ' expresses it, ' each word we speak has 
infinite effects.' But it extends farther also. The effect in space is that 
of attraction. That in time is also most easily represented under the 
figure of cohesion ; each incident tending as it were to bring near to' itself, 
to assimilate 1 to itself, the consequent incident, even if it appear under 
the shape of simple apparent existence. Plato would have called the 
principle self- imitation ; we may more familiarly style it the law of self- 
preservation. If indeed we might step farther still upon the debated ground 
of causality, a conjecture might perhaps be hazarded that we have here 
a hint of some common ground for a reconciliation of the controversy. 
For we hear on one side that a cause is a real motive power, an agency 
effective through itself ; and on the other that a ' cause ' means only a 
precedent in time, and that, while we build in our minds the idea of a 
physical energy at work, the effect is nothing really beyond a constant 
sequence. But once allow that a principle exists such as that developed 
above, and there is opened a possibility of connecting these theories. If 
time is gifted with the virtue of attraction, an incident happening in time 
is hardly dissociable from the actual idea of a cause ; and a transition 
such as that which we associate with a result is not so much a change 
interrupting an established order, as an actual property of the incident 
which we regard as having produced it. The two are connected not by 
a process, a transition, an intervening action as it were, but by the inherent 
nature of the two events as existing in time. 

Now, all that can be said in description of the effect of habit is, that by 
it one action produces an effect upon the next subsequent action of the 
same kind, and on those that follow it. This, then, with the necessary 
modification of the term ' effect,' is precisely what takes place in the 
sustentation of nature. Suppose an inanimate object to exist with certain 
properties. The continuance of one of them through a moment of time 

1 It is hard to help using the somewhat inappropriate word ' assimilate.' I mean 
that virtue by which an object being in any condition might be said to dravj 
towards itself the condition of the same object at the next moment of time. With 
regard to attraction, the magnet affords an instance of a faculty almost exactly 
resembling human habit. The more the property of attraction is exercised, the 
stronger it grows ; and if iron be placed close to a loadstone, the longer it remains in 
contact with it, the more of the property will it contract. And it may be remarked, 
that this forcible instance of the existence of the property in things indicates also 
most clearly that the extension of any power or faculty in the agency of habit is to 
be looked for in the active and motive, as distinguished from the passive and, so to 
speak, sensual qualities ; and the same is the case in animal magnetism, as it is 
called, the power of exercising which grows with practice, and is similarly attached 
to the active will. The whole subject of mesmerism bears out the parallel to a 
striking extent. 



288 EDWAED BOWEN 

produces it at the nest moment by a sequence or result which is the most 
simple form of self-preservation : the simple tendency of the property is 
to perpetuate itself. 1 Advanchig a step higher in the scale of nature, the 
tree shows a more marked, more full, evidence of this consequence ; the 
more the sap circulates, the stronger will be the tree, and the more room 
will it afford for further development. And, higher still, in the animals 
whose life so closely resembles ours, we find habits which would seem 
to differ from ours only in proportion to the difference of intelligence and 
reason. 

The first of these types is easily recognised as the first law of motion. 
It is the law of permanence independent of life. As such it may even 
perhaps receive a wider application. "We speak of Truth as a harmony ; 
we also speak of it as an essential unity; expressions which may to some 
extent be combined by considering it as equivalent to some sort of 
consistency. A statement in fact is veracious if it fills the exact place 
between its logical antecedents and consequents ; the concurrence of fact 
with fact throughout the infinity of being constitutes Truth. And indeed, 
if with all ' worship of Adrastea ' we may venture a somewhat bold 
speculation, some resemblance between statements of truth and the 
existence of objects seems to appear in the method of the generation of 
each. For if we conceive of a syllogism, the ultimate form of proof, as 
consisting of the general law of the class, the susceptible instance, and 
the consequence logically produced from the two ; we have a parallel, 
in the metaphysical generation of an object, in the quality to be impressed, 
the susceptible substance, and the result, the object as it is. Here the 
fact, that the consequence may follow from other premisses as well as the 
pair chosen, is answered by the similar fact that any quality may be 
considered as the determining quality for classification, both syllogistic 
reasoning and physical classification being only mental processes, and 
therefore arbitrary ; the object, that is, may be considered as produced by 
the quality in the same sense to the full as the consequence is produced 
by the premisses, since both general law and abstract quality are really 
conceived last in the order of nature. 

Vegetable life brings us to a higher degree of self-inherent, and con- 
sequently reflex, action. This appears, from all that we can see, to be its 
primary, death and corruption only its secondary, law. The same, too, 
is the case with regard to animal life considered only as energetic 
organisation, and the truth of which, physiologists assure us, commends 
itself by its adaptation to our ideas of the real meaning of life, and its 
adaptability also to what we have ventured to call the faculty of self- 
preservation — the truth, namely, that death and corruption are no 
necessary portions or consequents of growth and vitality, but that they 

1 . . . ut jam liceat una coinprekensione omnia complecti ; non dubiteniquc 
dicere, omnem naturani esse conservatricem sui, idque habere propositum quasi 
finem, et extremum, ut se custodiat quam in optimo sui generis statu. 

Cic. De Fin. v. ix. 26. 



THE FOECE OF HABIT 289 

are in fact in the highest sense unnatural. In fact, if the constitution of 
a healthy man be regarded for one instant by itself, as complete and 
self-acting, tbere is no inherent reason which would prevent it, we are 
told, from so continuing for ever. As matter, indeed, it does not finish ; 
for matter (like its kindred ' incident ' in the form of historical fact) ever 
preserves its being : as living matter, it only perishes by the engrafted law 
of death. 

One more step upwards, and we reach the human faculty of habit ; 
similarly, though imperfectly, developed in the brute creation. A higher 
principle of vital force is now at work: it no longer operates only in individual 
cells, but is collected in nervous centres of action. And here we find it, 
as we should expect, in that part of the brute nature which we may 
consider the highest, as bordering most closely on our own. ' Every rank 
of creation,' says Coleridge in the ' Aids to Reflection,' ' as it ascends in the 
scale of creation, leaves- death behind it or under it. The metal at the 
height of being seems a mute prophecy of the coming vegetation, into a 
mimic semblance of which it crystallises. . . . And wonderfully in the 
insect realm doth the irritability, the proper seat of instinct, while yet 
the nascent sensibility is subordinated thereto — most wonderfully, I say, 
doth the muscular life in the insect, and the musculo- arterial in the bird, 
imitate and typically rehearse the adaptive understanding, yea and the 
moral affections and charities, of man. . . . All lower natures find their 
highest good in semblances and seekings of that which is higher and 
better.' And so in the case before us, this faculty of man which solely 
exhibits his own action upon himself, the faculty which shapes his 
conscience, and is interwoven with the deepest roots of his responsibility, 
has its counterpart in that which is also the highest nature of the brute, his 
instinct, his affections, his sympathies, all that indicates action, motives, 
and will. 

We have hitherto used the term self-preservation in a somewhat 
different sense from that in which it is generally understood. But it is 
not necessary to exclude from the larger meaning the desire of self- 
preservation in the more common acceptance of the term. It is certain 
that no explanation has ever been given of the instinct sufficient to satisfy 
the phenomena ; for while the desire of life seems to imply that life is a 
good of some kind, if, on the other hand, it is an absolute good, we are at 
a loss to account for the circumstance that many lives are miserable, and 
if only a relative good, we are introduced to that to which it has a relation, 
viz. the immortality of the soul, a confidence of which would- hardly have 
the general effect of increasing the desire of life. The instinct, then, 
cannot be traced to a strictly logical motive, and may have its root in the 
same principle as that stated above, the first law of motion as applied to 
metaphysical action. 

These theories, which we have now, so far, brought to an end, may 
perhaps be thought fanciful. But if the word analogy has any meaning 
at all, they are not necessarily untrue. Not only the holy books, but the 
pages of nature as well, were written for our learning. "Why, indeed, 

U 



290 EDWAED BOWEN 

should we suppose that the world is governed by different laws from those 
which govern its inhabitants ? If in these efforts to obtain half-glimpses 
of some grand law of conservation we have been able to arrive with any 
degree of satisfactory success at a system which connects human action 
and its government with the workings of all nature in its various stages of 
life and growth, then we shall not have solved the mystery of responsi- 
bility, we shall not have discovered the whole nature of conscience, but 
we shall have given grounds for additional study of the relations of daily 
acts to the total progress and final destiny of man. 

III. Habit, the Instrument of Moral Education 

We have now considered the extent and direction of the force of habit, 
and have endeavoured to establish its relation to some greater, and 
possibly universal, law of nature. It remains to consider the result of its 
working upon the moral constitution of man, and its consequent connec- 
tion with the laws which are to us the exponents of the Divine moral 
government. 

When Luther, at the most critical moment of the Church's history, 
professed a new standard of faith and practice, the occasion which 
immediately impelled him was the sale of indulgences by Tetzel, and the 
grand doctrine which he established was that which denies salvation to 
mere acts at all. All hinged upon this : this depreciation of ' works ' as 
a purchase-money of salvation was the cardinal point of the Reformation. 
A quantitative application of deeds of wrong and right for striking the 
balance of Divine acceptance was abhorrent to any who chose, and who 
dared, to think. Some theory was needed which should exempt the 
Creator's dealings from the realm of mere arithmetical scrutiny, and 
establish a responsibility in the person himself much deeper and more 
perfect and more sacred than a summation of his merits could represent. 

Arnold of Brescia had conceived it. Tauler had whispered it in the 
ear. Erasmus had spoken it in the closet. Upon the housetops, indeed, 
Augustine had proclaimed it ; but centuries had dimmed the voice. 
Luther found it written in his heart, and gave it to the world. Not in an 
enumeration of acts of charity ; not in combinations of scourges and sack- 
cloth ; not in parchments signed, sealed, and sold for money ; no, not in 
any act or visible thing that the sun shines upon, or time takes note of — 

in the heart that is hallowed 
Lieth forgiveness enshrined. 

4 Not, " What hast thou done ? " ' says Trench, ' but " What art thou ? " 
will be the question to every man in that day. Sin is not exterior to the 
soul. We form ourselves ; we shape ourselves to truth and righteousness 
and faith ; by our actions, indeed, we shall be judged ; but it is not our 
actions that shall be judged, but ourselves.' 

For such a principle has been implanted in our minds and bodies, that 
no action is fruitless to the actor. Such a virtue lies in every exercise of 
the will, that no employment of it but recoils on the employer. By 



THE FOKCE OP HABIT 291 

habit, extending to each individual deed, the course of our lives is bound 
together by one great moral chain. Its links are great and small ; but 
there is one for every action. The man who acts thriftily becomes thrifty, 
and saves his heritage. The man who plays the prodigal is soon a 
prodigal at heart, and cannot but lose when he might have gained. In 
no other way than this each act of right or wrong bears testimony to the 
moral will, develops the moral character, advances steadily and pro- 
gressively the moral consummation. Truly in our own selves, no less 
than without, we are compassed about with an innumerable company of 
witnesses. Of the number are the nameless charities, the silent heroisms, 
the impractical, undemonstrative motions of goodness and love ; of the 
number, too, is the evTrepio-Taros &fj.aprla, the sin that cleaves like a garment. 
As surely as the growth of each leaf changes the form of the tree, so surely 
does each of these, with a distinct reality and life of its own, tend, one by 
one, to form and mould the man. 

And thus development is not an excrescence upon, but the very 
substance of, the moral law. Thus arises that truth, the statement of 
which is so trite, that the life of no man is stationary. The outgoings of 
the conscience cannot for one day be restrained ; in one or other of its 
two branches the stream of will must flow. And thus our moral nature is 
ever approaching more and more nearly its consummation. It deadens, 
slackens, perishes, or rises, strengthens, triumphs. Like the issue of the 
two dispensations upon earth, its two phases have an end ever in view : 
the one melted by degrees and died ; the other grows till it fills the earth 
with branches. And as the people might not gaze on the prophet's face 
lest they should see its brightness perishing," so neither will the angels of 
God bear to look upon the fullness of the perfected glory. But we approach 
it by steps not random, but certain ; not vague and meaningless, but 
stamped with a sureness of direction. Every sin that a man commits, 
he sins against his own soul and body ; what future humiliation the soul 
and body may endure will be no arbitrary decree of external vengeance, 
but a consequence akin to the crime. Earth travails in this with man ; 
earth, like him, is pregnant with its fate ; the end is nowhere dissociated, 
as far as creation extends, from the certain means and processes. 2 

We shall arrive, then, at a better idea of the meaning of moral govern- 
ment if we attach to the words, not the bare signification of a government 

1 2 Cor. iii. 13. 

a This seems to be the general sense of the obscure cosmogonical passage in 
2 Pet. iii. I translate literally : ' For this they willingly are ignorant of ' (hence the 
truth must have been matter of trustworthy tradition), ' that the heavens and earth 
of old were composed of water and by water, by the ordinance of God. By means of 
it (the same water), the then world perished, deluged with water.' The phrase 
' the then world ' is a strong expression when taken literally, and not in the weaker 
sense in which we might now probably apply the term. Here, so far, it appears that 
the writer considered water as the element of the old world, pointing at once to its 
constitution and destiny ; and it perished from internal causes, died from that very 
thing of which its nature in the main consisted. To continue : ' But the heavens 
and earth which now are, by his ordinance are treasured up, preserved in fire unto a 

u 2 



292 EDWAED BOWEN 

by rewards and punishments, but rather that of an adaptation of means 
to ends with direct reference to man's moral nature. And we shall 
better be able to conceive of such a government extending to the smallest 
acts of life, if we view them as bearing on the inward man, and not in the 
light of their results. Hence it is that Christianity is a religion of 
motives. The truth is, not that events mould us, but we mould our- 
selves ; that, if with reverence it may be spoken, the Creator supplies the 
instruments, and we have the work to do. Whether our work be a cheerless, 
solitary task, a forlorn and unaided toil, or whether in no single action 
are we destitute of a guidance above ourselves, Plato did not doubt, and 
we shall not; but that it is in this way that we shape our being, and in 
everything work towards an end, Scripture and reason prove. We may 
' drop and die like dead leaves in the shade,' but neither do they die to 
themselves, nor do we : in the life we have lived we have wrought out 
some destiny for ourselves, the issues of which are immortal. 

And in this broad method of looking at right and wrong as modelling 
the whole of our lives, and not merely certain actions which come under 
a special law — in this view of sin as existing in, and not outside, the soul 
— we shall not be surprised to find some human distinctions obliterated 
which interrupt and obscure the great canons of moral guidance. We 
shall not wonder if we are led to the conclusion that these laws of 
universal right, the simple conditions of morality, refuse to acknowledge 
the minor niceties of arrangement, and that, in this moral government, 
it is as repugnant to true philosophy to talk of mortal and venial sins as 
in the other field of natural laws to speak of ' special providences ' and 
' visitations of God.' 

In the consideration of the human conscience one phase in particular 
presents itself of great interest with reference to the subject of a Divine 
moral government ; that of its adaptability, in common with the other 
parts of our nature, to any special work or end. Any husiness which we 
undertake, and to which we are constantly attached, will mould us to 
itself in direct proportion to our assiduity in its pursuit. Even our 
pleasures have the same effect. It is from the invariable character of this 
action that Addison, in the ' Spectator,' draws one or two excellent practical 
reflections. He tells us, with aU the beauty of his unostentatious style, 
how irksomeness of labour soon wears off, nor is any occupation, under- 
taken through choice or necessity, to be despaired of as capable of 
becoming ultimately a source of pleasure. He enforces the duty of 
choosing the best and purest modes of life, and shows, as an encourage- 
ment so to do, that inclination will follow the choice, and custom render 
the labour pleasant. And with the suavity and gracefulness of language 

day of judgment.' The same idea is repeated in the next few verses. Here, then, 
the element in (rather than of) which the world at present consists is fire, and fire 
is to be its doom. After that the transition is to a third period, a new heaven and 
earth, the peculiar character of which is neither fire nor water, but something which 
is not to be touched or felt or handled. St. Peter says that 'in it dwelleth 
righteousness.' 



THE FOKCE OF HABIT 293 

with which the writers of his day seem always to have been inspired by 
the utterance of the word ' religion,' he draws the simple moral of faithful 
perseverance in duty. 

There are few men who have utterly failed so to read it, written, more 
or less distinctly, on their hearts. Whether in the obvious lesson of 
patient endurance recommended even to unwilling learners by this 
accommodation of the will to custom ; or by the agency of those manifold 
operations of habit, whose task, like that of Vulcan's children of old, was 
to make roads for the feet and render the earth inhabitable ; 1 or, to those 
who looked to the higher properties of our nature, the moulding of the 
individual conscience itself according to its task, the duty of ' continuance 
in well-doing ' cannot but have been patent to those who wished to see it. 
Can we notice how a strict observance of the rights due to all begets a 
sense of justice keen and discriminating ; how a character of magnanimity 
is engendered by a series of high and noble emotions ; how a course of 
life tending to unselfish considerations never fails to produce a corre- 
sponding reaction on the conscience which has devoted itself to these by 
voluntary choice ; and yet consider it all as instructive to ourselves alone ? 
Labour, suffering, lifelong devotion without an obvious and tangible end 
in view, is no doubt an idea the property chiefly of the Christian ; but it 
is not solely and exclusively his. Even the old mythology has its claims 
to such a conception, which we should be unwise to disallow. Look, for 
instance, at the stories of some of the heroes. We seldom appreciate 
them to the full. We admire them just because they were strong and 
brave. On this we are content to rest. The Greeks themselves were 
not ; not, at least, on this alone. They saw, too, that in all those toils, 
those fights, those victories over the robbers of the Isthmus, those de- 
capitations of Medusa the Gorgon, there was a philanthropy which ranked 
higher than the bravery ; there were labours for the good of others, and 
not for the good of self ; there were lives of patient suffering and virtue 
which asked, and obtained, no reward in this life. 

Hac arte Pollux et vagus Hercules 
Enisus arces attigit igneatj ; 

and, though ' sons of Zeus ' be an idea now no longer of limited applica- 
tion, those heavenly citadels may have been reached by many since in 
no very different way. 

Morality is, in Scripture language, a law written in our hearts. Habit, 
then, is the instrument by which the sentence is executed. The building 
is reared on the ground of the law; habits are the workmen; and— the 
building stands. It has many parts; nor are duties, nor habits, alike. 
Every faculty of sense and motion has its own allotted share. With 
those, then, by whom any one part of moral duty is exalted to a dominion 
over the rest, we cannot sympathise. Fanaticism is a neglect of the 
many for the one. We know that it has its parallel in the physical being ; 

1 MBch. Eum. 18, 14. 



294 EDWAED BOWEN 

that the blind person has the sense of touch developed to an inordinate 
degree ; and if we were to consider the state of the blind as perfection, 
we might easily allow that, without detriment to the living whole, one 
moral sense may be deadened while another is unduly excited. When 
Plato defined justice in a state as that by which each person keeps his 
station, his hearers wondered, but his republic held together. And when 
he found in the moral polity of the individual a constitutionalism, as it 
were, which answered to the kindred virtue of the state, he was satisfied 
that here, or nowhere, was justice to be found in man. By a somewhat 
different path we arrive at a similar result, and find in an equipoise of 
duties a surety for rightness of action and the healthful progress of the 
soul. Here, as before, the balance must be confined to the motives ; 
morality is related to the person and not to the action or its effects. 

We are prevented, for example, by such a rule as this, from commend- 
ing the hermit and the monk ; men who fall down and adore a morality of 
contemplation, though they offer it but the sacrifice of a shadow ; men 
who starve, in their lives, the very conscience which they would fain 
worship in the spirit. For this higher life of man is supported, in some 
sense, by the senses, as the lower life by food and air : or perhaps rather 
the being of man before he comes into the light would be a fitter type of 
the struggling life which the conscience lives on earth. The use of the 
objects of sense is to feed the moral growth : when the end comes we 
may perhaps be independent of them altogether. As the channels of 
nutrition of the body are open before birth, so the mind, anticipating its 
future real genesis, equally derives from without all the elements of the 
wondrous organism by which it will hereafter work. Its parts are 
fashioned day by day, while as yet there are none of them. 

To proceed; not every act connected with morality is a conscious 
one. A deed may have a tremendous moral significance — nay, may con- 
fessedly deserve the greatest possible punishment or reward, and yet may 
seem to proceed from instinct rather than from deliberate choice. Such 
a fact as this it were hard to understand without considering habit as the 
architect of the edifice to which we likened the moral nature. This me- 
mory, this reflex action, brings a similar instinct out of morality to that 
which the mere memory of the intellect educes from experience and 
embalms as knowledge. ' Nihil esse in intellectu quod non prius fuerit 
in sensu ' is not to be denied without a virtual change of the language ; 
nor can anything form a part of moral instinct that has not first passed 
through the plastic hands of reasonable will. And if instinctive impulse 
be, as some would tell us, the true key to riddles of conscience, it is only 
as a conviction of fact may be trusted in so far as it may be thought to 
rely on a previous induction of evidence. 

And it cannot be too strictly remarked that this human moral instinct 
bears to the brute instinct a relation only similar to the general relation 
of man and brute. In us it is the result of an habitual direction of will : 
in them it is, as it were, the total of that will, which could hardly indeed 
be exercised without it. In us it is a consequent, in them an antecedent, 



THE FOECE OF HABIT 295 

to definite actions. But having said thus much of distinction, if we allow 
that there is a relation at all between the two, we are thrown at once upon 
a strange field of conjecture ; a field which embraces in its bounds the 
secrets of personal being, and whose confines almost touch the still darker 
storehouse of mysteries of which the word creation is the door. We have 
already spoken of a Divine moral government of man as working by the 
great law, one phase of which we are accustomed to name habit ; we have 
looked upon the various lights in which it may be viewed from the ' stand- 
point ' of this heaven-implanted principle. Let us venture to cast one 
glance, if we can, beyond. We traced some law of Habit in the lower 
worlds of nature ; may we not even find some appropriateness in its working 
which may be not unworthy of a name similar to, if not actually, that of 
a moral government of things ? 

Is it a mere phrase, or is it more nearly a truth, that ' His mercy is 
over all His works ' ? . Was it but a dream, or was it something kindred 
to an inspired thought, which prompted the splendid saying, that from 
God Himself comes all that is good in man or beast or thing ? And if, 
in that part of the nature of every creature which our reason tells us is 
its highest and noblest possession, we find the same law which in us 
supports the fabric of virtue and holiness — if we trace its power and 
significance rising according as the creature itself, and therefore each of its 
highest attributes, increases — if we find everything that we see striving as 
it were and aiming after the state above itself, and in this very attempt 
producing and reproducing this law, this habit, this ethical self-preserva- 
tion, or whatever name we may choose to call it by, are we to shrink from 
recognising in it an ordinance beyond that of the mere sustenance of life, 
and pointing more or less distinctly to that which we prize as divinely 
moral in ourselves ? 

For so the whole round world is every way 
Bound with gold chains about the feet of God. 

What, then, serves the instinct of brutes ? Is its end merely to con- 
tinue their lives, and perpetuate their kind ? Do they merely exist and 
vegetate ? or are these, even, works touched and hallowed by that wondrous 
mercy ? Wherever the instinct gushes out as from a deeper source than 
sense, wherever the spirit shows itself apart from and higher than the flesh, 
there even in the beasts themselves a law works hi their members to bring 
forth fruit, if not of nobler life, as the fable told, at all events of happiness, 
and more likeness to the better nature above them. Wherever there is the 
law of which habit is the human exponent, there also appears the guiding 
law for which ' moral ' is hardly too great a term. And where a habit of 
gratitude and attachment develop, as in the house-dog for example, into 
an affection so nearly disinterested that we can no more assign a conscious 
final motive for its acts of love than for our own, if there is not here 
the dawning of a moral worth, then moral worth is a thing for which we 
have no test or standard whatever. 

We will not pursue the subject. We will not question whether even 



296 EDWAED BOWEN 

our moral law be but a type of some higher law that we know not. It is 
sufficient that it corresponds to our highest attributes; for no higher 
could assuredly be given us than that of moulding ourselves by our acts. 
There are those to whom the good gift of habit is no more than an aid to 
distort the true end of the soul. ' The things that should have been for 
their wealth are unto them an occasion of falling.' But that the gift is 
for our use and profit ; that by it we ' rise ' not only on our ' dead selves,' 
but upon our living selves as it were, to ' higher things ; ' that it carries 
engraven upon it the express sentence of the Divine will for our moral 
progress and perfection — this it is enough for us to know. 

"We have now endeavoured to indicate the nature of Habit as a human 
property, to examine it as a phase of a larger and general law, and to 
consider its consummate adaptation to our moral nature. Nor is it three 
views of a subject that are so much intended by these considerations, as 
three steps of an argument. For, granting that the effect of habit is 
strong and leads to moral ends, we see in it tenfold beauty and symmetry 
when we can observe the tokens of design, and look up to it with tenfold 
admiration and awe when it shines upon us as partial only in so far as we 
are incapable of understanding the whole. He who made us has made 
us, like all His works, with properties for working out the ends of our 
highest nature. Habit He has given as a principle to all creation ; in us 
He has invested it with life and dignified it with specialty of application. 

The end of such an investigation as the present can never be unmean- 
ing to ourselves. We can never attempt to obtain a clearer sight of an 
ordinance of Divine goodness, without finding and consecrating to our- 
selves if it be but the dust of the chamber of heavenly wisdom. Such 
considerations as these may tell us much, even though the speculation 
should be crude and the analysis imperfect. They tell us that if we are 
living under a paramount dispensation of right and wrong, so surely an 
atmosphere of moral significance breathes in the smallest acts of our will ; 
that habit, if it be no more, is the link which connects the meanest of 
ordinary deeds with the great laws which are a Theocracy over the hearts 
of all men. We exempt no person and no act from their influence ; we 
b elieve that they rule the earth ; that as ' the world is so framed by the 
word of God, that the things which meet our eyes consist not of mere 
objects of sense,' so they have rather their subsistence on the mind of a 
God whose prime law in our hearts is the sense of moral duty, the essence 
of that education and that Divine economy by which the whole course 
of His ' Church,' however wide be the issues of that word, is not only 
'governed,' but ' sanctified.' 



297 



III 

MODEEN WAR 1 

We propose in the few following pages to examine some of the senti- 
ments which have of late been popular with respect to the social benefits 
which war is supposed to confer : and the hope now often expressed of 
the effect which the tone of our popular action might receive from a con- 
flict such as that in which we have been lately engaged. It is not easy, 
nor is it always practicable, to scrutinise narrowly the results of any one 
set of circumstances on the character of a people : it is hopeless to do so 
when the total effect is considerably overrated : but when it is intimated 
in quarters which command respect and secure attention, that a modern 
European war will awaken a nation from a lethargy of dishonest hypo- 
crisy, and produce a healing impulse almost in private character ; and this 
so much even that the consummation, in spite of its attendant horrors, is 
one devoutly to be wished ; it is time honestly to inquire what foundation 
these expectations have : what will remain over and above in the way of 
social improvement, when such a war has ended : what we have left to us 
of durable reinvigoration when our friends are wounded ha Russia, and 
our purses exhausted by the income tax. 

It was once the dream of the poet, and the prophet's most confident 
hope, that the days of war should cease. The prevailing passion for 
paradox would naturally lead us to expect that our bards of to-day will 
pray for the death of peace. There are many circumstances which 
remove from ourselves the horrors of war. The scene has not been laid 
in our land for many generations ; we have forgotten the look of the ruined 
village and the desolated champaign ; we can only guess at the real hue of 
mangled limbs and bleeding wounds. Nor is this aU ; the sober current 
of national life flows evenly in a clear-hewn channel ; the wheels of the 
car of state follow quietly in the beaten groove. We have leisure to mark 
the social blots, we descry easily the shallow thought and heartless life, 
we long for a grand passion, a stirring impulse which shall rouse us to 
know ourselves and one another better, and live more as men, and fellow- 
citizens should. And such, we sometimes conceive, might be found in 
the excitement of war. And yet somehow our armies have fought and 
perished, and our coffers have been emptied, and all our state energies 
aroused for combat ; and we find still that chicory is mixed with coffee, 
and bank directors rob their creditors, and but for the private sorrows, 
and a few great lessons we have learnt, it is as though the war had 
never been. 

1 Contributed to Academica, May 1858. 



298 EDWAED BOWEN 

We are justified, then, in inquiring, whether these anticipations de- 
served to be realised ; whether there was truly any foundation for the idea 
that society would be bettered and the tone of public feeling raised by the 
proclamation of a European war. If we find that these hopes were desti- 
tute of a good ground and substance, and that we must look for the 
greatest development of the better national feelings not in conflicts with 
other nations only, but also and rather in those purposes and energies 
which are consistent with the enjoyment of the profoundest peace and 
most friendly foreign relations — then we shall have reason to believe that 
civilisation is a real working agency for good after all : and that the por- 
tion of the national frame which may be used to the greatest advantage is 
not, as poets fable, the muscles, but the mind. 

Such a poem as ' Maud ' can plead no exemption from tbe laws of posi- 
tive argument, so far as the poem itself is didactic in tenor. Nor is the 
madness of the hero a shield against the assaults which may fairly be 
made against it ; since it only serves, as far as we can see, to soften and 
tone down the harsh propositions which would otherwise perhaps hardly 
have obtained the assent which has largely been granted to them. Now 
in this poem it is indicated that we are being consumed by the canker of 
peace. We have made it, we read, far from a blessing ; society is rotten, 
trade dishonest, we are virtually at war with one another. Burglary and 
drunkenness are in particular some of the fruits of peace, and fatten on 
the pastoral hillock. Now if splendid language and a rhythm new and 
entrancing were sufficient to insure what after all is simply true political 
economy, we of course should not venture to criticise those eloquent 
verses of the Laureate. But is the stigma on peace one rightly and fairly 
deserved ? are these specified evils to be traced to these specified causes ? 
We think not. Society is rotten? We doubt very much whether the 
Tory lord gave up his dinners when he heard of the entrance into the 
Black Sea. The news of Balaclava did not shorten our milliners' bills, or 
annihilate for ever morning calls. Trade dishonest ? Yet Paul and 
Strahan may have speculated in the war loan, and Bobson and Bedpath 
did somehow swindle through it all. Fraud did not cease when we sent 
our armies out ; and the analysis of the ' Lancet ' did more to purify our 
food than the message from her Majesty to the Commons. Is the love 
of gold the parent of all cheating and malice ? Yet surely this is a mere 
phase of the general plague of competition ; and a myriad of Laureates 
would fail to convince us that a restriction on the necessaries of life has 
a tendency to remove this curse. Let us boldly state what we believe ; 
the richer a nation is, so far the more prosperous it is, and the more happy 
its inhabitants ; and if we have no reason to suppose that peace is a fruit- 
ful mother of crime, in the name of all social science, let us be peaceful, 
and prosperous, and rich. Our brute instincts teach us that to fight is 
part of our nature ; and a necessary part, too, as history shows ; but if 
we read and believed some few of our popular works just now, we should 
run the risk of laying them down persuaded that the object of reason and 
Christianity was not to regulate our brute instincts, but to stimulate 



MODERN WAR 299 

them. Deny it if you will, each member who sat on committee the other 
morning upon Church rates was a better object of veneration than any of 
the vieilles moustaches or the older beaux sabreurs. 

Are we then to deny that a just war, justly waged, has its uses ? Let 
us separate the justice and the use, and acknowledge the benefit only in 
the large agencies for good which the sense of a right action will always 
have. The late war was commenced, carried on, and completed for a 
single, clear, and righteous object — the maintenance of the police of 
Europe, the sustaining in all its integrity of a system which we share for 
the common profit, the resistance to aggression, not because it directly 
injured us, but because we were conscious that the offence was an indirect 
injury to all, and that it attacked an individual part of the common body 
of European interest which it was our duty to defend. The very fact of 
suffering for this object was a glory and benefit to all ; but when once we 
pass this point, when once we lay the glory in the pride of repelling the 
usurper, when we once in the very slightest degree wage war for the sake 
of success, when Alma and Inkermann £11 us with any sensations beyond 
pleasure at the certainty of our own strength, this feeling of a common 
interest either vanishes or becomes a curse, because it is selfish ; and the 
common energy shows itself no longer a harmonising principle, but an 
endeavour for common aggrandisement. Now has there been, on the 
other hand, in a kindred though different department of the public service, 
something lately of a higher glory gained ? Have we had before us 
something which may perhaps hereafter be a still greater cause of re- 
joicing than all the triumphs of the war ? Is there something which 
gives greater hopes of national prosperity and advancement than the 
unanimous vote of money to the Queen or the stubborn resistance of that 
November morning ? Have we not that speech, spoken by an English 
representative at the Congress of Paris, the substance of which the 
cramped minute boldly but eloquently shadows forth ? — 

' The Earl of Clarendon, having demanded permission to lay before 
the Congress a proposition which he thinks should be favourably received, 
states that the calamities of war are still too present to every mind not 
to make it desirable to seek out every expedient calculated to prevent 
their return. That a stipulation had been inserted in Art. vii. of the 
Treaty of Peace, recommending that in case of difference between the 
Porte and one or more of the other signing Powers, recourse should be 
had to the mediation of a friendly state before resorting to force. The 
First Plenipotentiary of Great Britain conceives that this happy innova- 
tion might receive a more general application, and thus become a barrier 
against conflicts which frequently only break forth because it is not 
always possible to enter into explanation and come to an understanding. 
He proposes, therefore, to agree to a resolution,' &c. 

Well spoken, representative of England ! Is not this a positive gain ? 
May we not presume that we have here the germ of a system which after 
years and years may lead us, in spite of all the ' Mauds ' that can be written, 
to cast our hopes, not on the coming of a Russian fleet against Portsmouth, 



300 EDWAED BOWEN 

but on the steady and unselfish working of honest diplomacy, and very 
possibly a multitude of those processes of civilisation which more than 
one parliamentary orator would call hypocrisies and shams ? 

And yet there are those who grow weary of mere prosperity, who see 
the evil much more vividly than the good, who have no sympathy with 
that patient and profound analysis which has elicited the great principles 
of social and political well-being. Forgetting that in ninety-nine cases 
out of a hundred in the world's history it has involved a folly and a crime ; 
forgetting that even with every favourable construction it contains a 
strange and mystifying anomaly when waged by a Christian nation ; 
omitting the consideration of the physical suffering, and disregarding that 
of the moral contradiction, they call for some whirlwind of war to sweep 
away the noxious vapours which they see lazily gathering round the 
apathy of our prosperous peace. 

It would be well sometimes to consider, when invoking the whirlwind, 
what the object and end of the whirlwind is. War for the sake of 
aggrandisement is now abandoned, in name at least, if not in practice. 
War for the sake of polemic proselytism, whether civil or religious, has 
been during the last half-century condemned. We do not now cast 
jealous eyes on Normandy, or send men-of-war on a mission for the 
advancement of constitutional principles. Europe seems now to have 
reached the higher ground of morality which lays bare the maxim that 
war is just only for self-defence. Whether self-defence relate merely to 
the repelling of foreign invasion, or have another larger meaning whereby 
tenfold strength is given to the cause of order — the meaning which in- 
cludes the maintenance of the integrity of each nation by the arms of all 
in common — can hardly be questioned by a people which has lately 
fought and suffered for the cause of the family of nations. But if there is 
one thing more certain than another in the whole subject of international 
ethics, if there is one point upon which no dispute can be maintained and 
no doubt arise, it is that war is an evil which is better, if possible, avoided. 
Which cardinal fact we are likely, it would seem, either to forget or 
deny. 

The fact is, that all profit, all social advantage, which could have 
arisen from the late war, was neutralised by its distance. We never saw 
the enemy's fleet come yonder round by the hill. We never felt the rush 
of the shot from the three-decker out of the foam. When Philip swore 
to crush the small proud island, and the great Armada was first descried 
by the fishing-boat from Plymouth Sound, yeomen assembled, and mer- 
chant captains banded, the apprentices of London shouldered the 
blunderbuss, and the Queen came down and reviewed thern. Enemies of 
twenty years shook hands, factions which hated to the death were one 
again ; one heart, one soul breathed through the island, lord and lout, 
Papist and Beformer. When the last ultimatum was rejected in '54, 
and her Britannic Majesty's representative at St. Petersburg declared 
that the violent construction which Count Nesselrode put on the treaty of 
Adrianople obliged him to request his passports — a slight increase of 
activity was observed in the neighbourhood of the national dockyards, a 



MODERN WAR 301 

rather unusual excitement in the barrack towns ; the country at large 
read with interest and curiosity the reports of the special correspondent ; 
and paid with a grumble of discontent the extra seven-pence in the pound. 

So be it. But let us keep the chronology true. If the effect of war 
is changed, let us confess it. One great influence which used to work 
upon our people, the uniting and banding effect of a common danger, the 
brave unanimity inspired by a common mighty enterprise, is nearly gone ; 
and who would wish it back ? Let us, if the course of the world sq bid, 
if the lauded work of Christianity compel, if the glorious destinies of 
commerce constrain, let us resign this good, which was then so dearly 
bought. Has it given way to a better and more elevated influence ? Has 
it left its substitute ? 

Its substitute is graver, stronger, and better. It is the altered pur- 
pose of the man, which may be nobler, if fate so will, than the easy 
enthusiasm of the child.. It is the sense which the prosperous nation, 
under the new regime, will have, of strength used all for good ; of 
energies which cannot be abused so long as they are used in peaceful 
self-improvement. That ship is not the more compact which is always 
beaten by the waves ; Hercules had his sinews as firmly braced when he 
worked at Elis as at Nemea. And perhaps our land may have done 
enough of late years in the way of slaying lions ; and it might not be 
amiss for it to turn for a short time to the task of its Augean stables. 
But whether this be its work or no, it will have to learn by some 
work or other that the calm exercise of the national will even by the 
modern system, the working for what is right and good by blue-books 
and reports, debates and diplomacy, taxes and statistical returns, may 
lift it to as high a pinnacle of social brotherhood and evangelic single- 
heartedness, as if the cannon were thundering in the Channel, and all 
Manchester turned out as one man to slay the French. It is not that 
the nation has changed ; it is not that its work has degenerated ; it is 
but that civilisation has brought its fruits ; and among them we reckon a 
gravity of political action, which may indeed appear to obliterate the 
freshness of popular energy, but leaves in its stead the possibility of 
equal vigour combined with a recognition of the laws which have altered, 
we believe for good, the relations which we bear, man to man, and 
nation to nation. We are going on in a path which is not averse to 
energy, and not repugnant to honesty ; we have openings wider and 
wider every day for the lover of his country to do it what good he may. 
If we wish, then, to go on and advance till we approach more, nearly, and 
as nearly as may here be, to the form of a perfect nation, if we desire 

that 

noble thought be freer under the sun, 

And the heart of the nation beat with one desire, 

let us ennoble that desire, and strive to enrich that thought not in a mere 
outward enthusiasm caught from some instinct of the sinews, but by 
those means which are prepared by the onward progress of humanity for 
the use and benefit of nations which recognise their highest happiness in 
the quiet routine of civilisation. 



302 EDWARD BOWEN 



IV 
ON TEACHING BY MEANS OF GRAMMAR 1 

It may be useful to all persons who are disposed to take a conservative 
view of any disputed question, to point out that one of two charges may 
on all occasions be brought against an argument for reform. All topics, 
except metaphysical ones, have a theoretical and a practical side ; and a 
writer cannot easily discuss both at one and the same time. Nothing, 
then, can be simpler than to urge in favour of an existing system, that 
the theoretical objections to it are not practical, and that the practical 
objections are not profound. But it is sometimes forgotten that a system 
may be bad both in theory and in practice at once ; or, which is another 
way of stating the case, the manner in which it is worked may be wrong, 
and the reasons for establishing it at all may be wrong also. Those who 
desire in great measure to remodel English education have, for the most 
part, views not only as to the substance but as to the manner of teaching ; 
and these views are fairly separable. The present essay will relate almost 
entirely to method. It will assume that other things have at least as 
much right as the classical languages to form the basis of modern train- 
ing, and that it is desirable nevertheless that at some age and to some 
persons classics should still be taught. The question which it will discuss 
is whether the mode of teaching classics by a laborious preliminary 
instruction in grammar is the best mode possible. 

Pedantry is not only the commonest vice, and the worst vice, of 
schoolmasters, but it is one towards which everyone who has engaged 
in the work of teaching must have repeatedly been conscious of a ten- 
dency. The work of every profession, no doubt, takes an undue import- 
ance in the eyes of men who devote themselves to it laboriously ; but that 
of a teacher is peculiarly favourable to the development of crotchets. 
Let a clever man study assiduously the properties of a Greek particle or 
the ramifications of a theorem in mathematics, and he will be sure to find 
out some things which have not been found out before, to trace connec- 
tions which no one has yet thought of tracing, to illuminate his subject 
by the relation which he will find it bear to other branches of knowledge. 
There may be much good in what he does ; but he will be more than 
human if he can help regarding his work as exceptionally interesting and 

1 Contributed in 1867 to Essays on a Liberal Education, edited by the 
Rev. F. W. Farrair, now (1902) Dean of Canterbury. 



TEACHING BY MEANS OP GEAMMAE 303 

valuable. He will find it fill much of his mind, and thrust itself in front 
of other branches of study which in reality have equal value ; he will give 
to it a natural emphasis in his own thoughts, and an artificial prominence 
in the culture which he urges upon others. A kind of paternal solicitude 
will at any rate add weight to his favourite topic, and personal vanity 
will not impossibly help it. Now, in most other professions a man deals 
with his equals, sees things in constantly varying lights, rubs off his in- 
tellectual as well as his social angles. But a teacher is without this 
advantage. He is not under immediate control ; public opinion acts upon 
him only indirectly and at a long interval of time ; he is not at the mercy 
of those with whom he is brought into contact, and his results are seldom 
so patent that the connection of cause and effect can be traced with much 
precision. There arises as the consequence of this a fixed impression 
that his own work is the best possible, simply because it has been the 
most fruitful to himself : an impression not so much irrational as un- 
reasoning. The belief is not necessarily untrue, but the chances are 
greatly against it. At any rate it can hardly fail to be narrow and 
illiberal. Ask a disciple of Porson whether it is really the case that the 
chief object of examining the language of the classical writers is that one 
may know what the writers have got to say, and he will admit the pro- 
position with so many limitations and modifications as to make it obvious 
that he hardly admits it at all. 

It is quite certain, indeed, that the object which is now intended in 
the teaching of Latin and Greek must be different from what it was in 
the days of Queen Elizabeth. At that time schools and universities made 
boys learn those languages in order that they might have some acquaint- 
ance with the authors who wrote in them. No sane man can assert that 
the same object is pursued at present, unless he is prepared to allow that 
it is sought at the avowed cost of sacrificing the many to the few. It is 
the evident failure to carry out the original intention of classical studies, 
which has made it necessary to bring more prominently forward the sup- 
posed advantages of grammar. If boys, it is felt, cannot in general be 
brought to get any good from the thoughts of Plato and Homer by their 
study of the tongue in which they wrote, at all events they will have the 
advantage of studying the words and constructions which they used. 
Without altogether denying the truth of this assertion, it is well to re- 
member the position which it takes in the argument. No pleas are more 
open to suspicion than those which are urged in support of a falling cause. 
When we have to invent some new doctrine to prop up an institution 
which originally existed in virtue of a doctrine wholly different, we feel 
that we are treading at once on treacherous ground. The view that is 
promulgated may have its merits, but they are not generally found to be 
the precise merits which suffice to bear up the fabric. When paganism 
was seen to be untrue, it was said that at all events it was useful. When 
rotten boroughs were found to interfere with the representation of the 
country, it was pleaded that at any rate they produced Lord Macaulay. 
As regards the teaching of grammar, it sometimes seems as if it would 



304 EDWAED BOWEN 

be a good thing to attempt to express distinctly, after the manner of Mr. 
Charles Buxton in his ' Ideas of the Day,' the grounds upon which it is 
based in the minds of those who assert its importance. They seem to fall 
under three heads : there is the idea that grammar is useful for the sake 
of teaching the language ; the idea that its difficulties are useful as a 
moral training; and the idea that it is a desirable object of study for its 
own sake. We may consider these as being the only ideas generally 
entertained ; for the view, which was expressed last year in a pamphlet 
by an eminent composer of a school grammar, to the effect that grammar 
and religion are so closely connected that uniformity in the one is the 
first step to uniformity in the other, has not been accepted so widely 
that we need stop to discuss it here. The ideas just mentioned we may 
proceed to consider in detail. 

I. The first of them we will meet with a direct negative. By 
grammar is, of course, meant a formal analysis of usage, in respect of 
inflexion and syntax. Can it be said that this system of teaching by 
means of grammar is the most successful now ? It will be remembered 
that the only question for the moment is how a language may be most 
quickly learnt. The problem is solved every day by grown-up men and 
women. There is not an Englishman in the country who, if he wanted 
to learn French, would begin by committing to memory a whole volume 
of rules and formulae. By doing so, he would certainly succeed in the 
end ; but he would know that it would be a waste of time and labour. 
What does the captain of a boat club at the universities do, if he wants 
to teach a man to row ? Does he keep him practising, on dry land, the 
motions which he will have to perform, and fixing in his memory the laws 
which are to guide him when he enters upon work at last ? Nothing of 
the kind. If you wish to make a man row, you will give him an oar and 
show him how ; you will make him feel what it is like ; you will make 
him sit behind a good pattern of the art ; you will give him the advice, 
just as you see that he needs it. There is nothing in the whole world 
which is not learnt best by trying. ' Per parlare bene,' says the old 
Italian proverb, ' bisogna parlare male.' No doubt there is necessary for 
all practice some rudimentary conception of what the work is likely to 
be. A man must know which end of the oar he is to hold in his hand, 
and which to dip in the water. A child cannot do much in the classics 
till a few simple declensions have been taught him. But the sooner he 
can begin to ' pick up ' the language, the better. Let him get familiar 
with the commonest words, and know what they mean in English. Let 
him translate and re-translate the easiest possible sentences with no 
grammatical analysis in his head ; let certain words in Latin correspond 
to certain others in English. He will see, as a matter of course, that a 
nominative comes syntactically before a verb ; and he will see it far 
more clearly and truly than if he knew the fact from having learnt it in 
the form of a rule. If we have once made sure that a boy considers the 
expression ' Us are going out ' as absurd and grotesque, he not only knows, 
with regard to the subject of a simple sentence, enough to enable him to 



TEACHING BY MEANS OE GEAMMAE 305 

learn Latin and Greek without any further teaching on this head ; but it 
may be a question whether he does not know all that there is to be said 
on the subject. The study of language is, at the present day, the only 
kind of study which deliberately professes to advance in a direction 
exactly the reverse of every other branch of human progress. In every 
other fruitful inqtury, we ascend from phenomena to principles. In 
classical study alone, we profess to learn principles first, and then advance 
to facts. 

It will be remembered that we are not undervaluing the benefit that 
the mind may receive from understanding grammatical principles. The 
question is temporarily narrowed ; we are asking only how a language 
may be most quickly learnt ; and we are insisting in reply that it is by 
cultivating, as soon as possible, a familiarity with its words and sentences, 
rather than with the principles upon which these are framed and joined. 
It is a truly painful sight to see a boy sit down to master a set of clumsy 
rules, of which he will never use the half, and never understand the 
quarter. He is, as almost all boys are, willing to be taught. He is, as 
very many are, prepared to submit to a reasonable amount of drudgery. 
He is, we will say, of average ability and endurance. Of such a boy, 
we will confidently assert that, for the purpose of learning the language 
to the extent to which he will probably be able to carry it at school and 
college, the greater part of what he has to learn in most grammars is 
wholly useless. His time, his temper, his docility, his confidence in his 
teachers, his desire to improve — all these are sacrificed in order that 
some analyst, for whose peculiar powers of mind the compilation of his 
grammar may have been a charming exercise, may not have written in 
vain. Pedantry gains, and English education suffers. 

How, then, ought a set of boys to be trained, supposing that our im- 
mediate object is to make them understand a Latin writer ? Plunge 
them, we answer, at once into the delectus. Let them begin the trans- 
lation of easy sentences even before they know the declensions by heart. 
Never give a rule of any kind, unless it is one which is clearly and 
obviously founded upon a collection of instances. Get the meaning 
accurately, and the grammar may follow as its handmaid. Never let 
time be wasted at a difficulty : if, when fairly coped with, it is insuper- 
able, give quick and willing help. Be ready to tell liberally ; aim at 
quantity as well as quality; treat inflexions invariably in connection 
with their meanings. Make your accidence and syntax a result instead 
of a basis. So far from believing that nil desperandum, be ready to 
despair very often — give up, that is, an attempt to force intelligence 
beyond its natural limits. The construction of relatives, for example, 
is a difficult subject to very young boys. If so, let it wait till they have 
read more, and added some hundred or so of examples to their store. 
In short, working always by means of reference to English, advancing 
regularly from known to unknown, never once allowing a statement to 
be taken on trust, or an abstract principle to precede its concrete illus- 
tration, train boys to know many things which they cannot hope to 

X 



306 EDWARD BOWEN 

understand, but never to hope to understand a thing which they have 
not learnt to know. 

In a Greek text-book, which is learnt by most English schoolboys, 
there occurs, as the introduction to an elaborate system of tense-forming, 
the following statement : ' Praesens medium et passivum formatur a 
praesente activo mutando a in opai, ut rt>7rrco, Tvirrojiai.' 1 This rule is 
supposed to be learnt by young boys in order that they may the better 
understand the Greek language. Now, in the first place, the statement 
is, as so many other rules of the same kind, absolutely false. The present 
passive was never yet formed from a verb in <u. The comparatively 
simple form in opai was in existence long before the contracted termina- 
tion of the active. But, a grammarian may say, the pupil who has the 
active before him will now be able to form the passive for himself. Did 
any pupil ever do so since the world began ? "Why, he has just been 
learning the inflexion of Tinrrofiai in his very last lesson. As a matter of 
fact, schoolboys know very well that, when they want to think of a rule 
for the formation of a tense, they have to think first what the word is, and 
then what is the best way to get it. Their instinct reverses the illogical 
order which the grammar has tried to force upon them. Monstrous as 
these arbitrary rules are, they are but a sample of the substance of which 
grammars are generally full ; and they are expressed in a language which 
the boys, however much they may translate it, can never at this period 
understand and make their own. It has sometimes occurred to us to 
fancy — but that the thing can hardly be fancied — a teacher of some other 
department of study attempting to succeed by the same means as those 
which we have described. We will suppose that a professor of chemistry 
is beginning work with his class. Proceeding upon the classical prin- 
ciples, he will first commit the whole of his knowledge to a volume, which 
he will draw up in a dry and technical style, and, if possible, in a dead 
language. Of this he will ask his class to learn a certain portion every 
day, and to believe the time may come when they may want it. He will 
perform a few experiments, every detail of which he will refer to then- 
position in the book. He will m-ge as carefully as he can that the phos- 
phorus takes fire, not because chemical force is set at liberty, but because 
the book says that it shall. He will introduce into his book-lessons the 
rarest metals and the most elaborate combinations, not because the pupils 
will commonly use them in the laboratory, but because his system is not 
complete without them. And when he finds that his disciples hate their 
work, and, in practice, hardly know an acid from a base, he will believe 
that the fault lies not in his mode of teaching, but in the unfortunate 
incompleteness of his book. 

"Waste of time and waste of energy generally go together. The per- 
petual routine of text-books wearies, distresses, dissipates. That one 
method of study is more pleasant than another is no small argument in 
its favoiu", if this pleasure mainly consists in a rapid process of the in- 
tellect. Lexicons, by what we have said, are to beginners almost as 
noxious as grammars. Everyone who knows Greek in the end must 



TEACHING BY MEANS OF GEAMMAE 307 

remember well how dreary have been the hours which he has spent upon 
the simply mechanical exercise of turning over leaves, with his eye fixed 
upon the heading of the page. It is monotonous, it is unintellectual, it is 
distasteful in the highest degree ; and there is not a public schoolmaster 
in the kingdom who has the courage and the benevolence to dispense with 
it. Lexicons must no doubt exist, for they are needed in many ways ; 
but there is no worse way of discovering the English equivalent of a 
simple word than looking it out in a dictionary. It is better to have a 
glossary ; it is better to ask a teacher ; it is better even to have a literal 
translation : better, simply because these methods do not waste the time 
of the learner and do not spoil his temper. In his first book of Homer 
an average boy will look out somewhere between two and three thousand 
words in his lexicon, and spend, on a moderate computation, from forty to 
fifty hours in the search. Grievous, however, as his waste of time in this 
direction is, it is work of the fingers alone ; the lessons of grammar that 
he learns will torture his brains as much, and will not even give him the 
satisfaction of feeling in the end that he has gained his grain of know- 
ledge. He will have done something, it is true ; he will not have been 
idle ; he will have done as hard work as people do who turn a treadmill. 
The use of grammar has been defended on the score that it, after all, 
does give something for dull boys to do. The argument is perfectly clear. 
It is upheld as being, after all, an excellent substitute for education. 

Hitherto we have considered grammar as a help to the knowledge of 
Greek and Latin ; and from the idea of grammar we exclude a few simple 
paradigms and all kind of oral explanation. We assert that systematic 
grammar, complete, technical, printed in a book, for the purpose of 
learning the dead languages, is more an encumbrance than a help : the 
value of grammar itself we have not for a moment denied. 

III. But it is as an end, not as a means, that it is valuable. When once 
a language has been mastered, there are few uses to which the knowledge 
can be more appropriately turned than that of obtaining some insight 
into its organism. One student may care chiefly to investigate the 
history of its inflexions and the architecture of its words ; another may 
find more interest hi analysing their mutual connection. Both paths of 
study are worth pursuing for their own sake, and some steps may be made 
towards both, even while the language itself is being learnt. Only let it 
be accepted as a cardinal law of education, that before it can do any profit- 
able work the mind must have material to work upon. The study of 
Logic presents a close parallel to the study of grammar. It would be 
possible to conceive a boy taught to argue from first principles. If, by 
enormous labour, he could instil into his mind the various rules of 
Aldrich, and regard them as a code of laws which he was bound to obey 
whenever a sequence of propositions presented itself to his mind, it is 
conceivable that he might produce the requisite conclusion from the 
premisses before him, though he had never conducted an argument before 
in his life. Supposing that a system of this kind existed at our English 
schools, it is more than likely that a great deal would be urged in its 

x 2 



308 BDWAED BOWEN 

favour. It is necessary, it would be said, to imbue the mind with true 
and proper rules, in order that it may be prepared to use them when the 
time comes. To argue, we should be told, is nothing, unless one argues 
from a comprehension of the rules of argument. The defenders of this 
system would be no more driven from then position by the fact that many 
people are logical without having been to Oxford, than the grammar writers 
of the present day are confounded by the circumstance that Euripides 
wrote excellent Greek without having ever heard of an optative mood. 

Putting aside that part of grammar which depends on memory, the 
rest is simply a logical training. It would be hard to find a better 
practising ground than grammar for the logical studies of manhood, or 
even of adolescence, simply because it is so copious and ready to hand. 
Once given that the subject can be fairly grasped, and it is one which 
repays a liberal expenditure of time. But it is curious that it should be 
regarded at schools as the only vehicle through which logical ideas 
should be instilled. Not till after many years of Latin and Greek does a 
boy really come face to face with the thoughts which the grammars put 
before him ; while considerations about all men being animals, but all 
animals not being men, are so simple that boys of fifteen might well sit 
down to attack them. ' The dative,' say the grammars, ' is the case of the 
remoter object.' Nothing could be simpler to the understandmg of any 
of us who write, or who read, this volume. We have a clear, an edu- 
cated comprehension of the remoter object ; the notion is something 
more to us than a mere form of words. But an average boy does not, 
will not, cannot actually get at it. He can be taught to know a remoter 
object when he sees it in print ; he will say to himself that it is a kind of 
thing which won't do for an accusative, and yet comes in and seems to 
make sense. He knows it, as it were, on the outside ; he knows it as he 
knows a word that is put in italics. Give him time, make him familiar 
with dative constructions, let his mind get strength and flexibility, and 
these grammatical conceptions will come to have a meaning to him ; but 
tell him at the outset of his studies (as the grammars do) that the Latin 
dative means the case of the remoter object, and you will merely add 
another grain to that heap of evidence which is slowly accumulating in 
his mind that learning is a thing unsuited for a young person of sense and 
spirit. Yet easy logical exercises would be a pleasant task for the same 
intellect which rejected the definition of the dative. The grammar book — 
the scientific part of it — is simply too hard. High grammar is fit to 
range with high astronomy or metaphysics. One actual teacher of boys, 
at all events, will hereby venture to question whether the meaning of an 
aorist is really ever grasped by anyone below the age of twenty. He 
has found boys interested and intelligent when the nature of a syllogism, 
or the fallacy of a proverb, are explained to them ; he doubts whether he 
has ever thoroughly conveyed to the mind of any one pupil the difference 
between ov and \x.r). 

Let it be observed how naturally our view agrees with the practical 
demands of education. It is confessed that most boys gain very little 



TEACHING BY MEANS OF GEAMMAE 309 

from the knowledge of Greek and Latin that they pick up at school ; and 
even if (which is devoutly to be wished) those only pursued the study of 
language who were likely to make some progress in it, still, at the best, 
it would be but a few who would be in at the death when it came to the 
dissection of the particles. In a word, very many learners can never 
master grammar to any real purpose. The order of instruction which we 
claim as natural would then be also the most convenient. The mass will 
be able, when they cease their education, to know something of what the 
Greek and Latin writers said : the select few will have found their way 
on to the secondary goal, which but few of the writers themselves ever 
reached, that of understanding the exact physiology of their language. 
True, the study which we speak of as second in point of time will prac- 
tically follow along with the mere parlance in the case of a clever boy. 
One group of phenomena in language well perceived, the synthesis and 
comparison and arrangement of these and other groups will not be an 
affair of difficulty. It is not to be supposed that the acquaintance with 
the speech itself must be perfect before the other study commences. 
This is not the way in which any branch of knowledge subordinates itself 
to another ; but the first may be, and ought to be, the measure of the 
second. Let things be known in the rough, before they are polished into 
shape. A grain of showing is worth a bushel of telling, whether the topic 
be a handicraft or a virtue, the performance of a trick of cards, or the 
construction of an infinitive mood. 

We are by no means inclined, indeed, to make immoderate concessions, 
or regard the final attainment of grammatical principles as among the 
loftiest achievements of the mind. What, after all, is this ' scholarship,' 
upon the possession of which so many of us, with more or less reason, are 
in the habit of priding ourselves ? A man is a fine scholar, a beautiful 
scholar, a finished scholar. What does this mean ? It is simply that he 
remembers accurately the words and phrases that each particular Greek 
or Latin author was most in the habit of using — or, it may happen, of 
abusing. He knows exactly how often this trick of language occurs in 
Pindar, and within what limits that turn of a sentence is capable of being 
employed by Ovid. How far in intellectual growth has such an accom- 
plishment brought him ? Why, it is a knowledge which we should almost 
blush to possess in regard of Addison and Macaulay. Exactly so far as it 
makes us understand Greek thought better, it is worth having ; but how 
miserably incommensurate are the means with the end. In Greek 
tragedy, a woman, when she speaks of herself in the plural, uses the 
masculine gender ; and when she speaks of herself in the masculine, uses 
the plural. Here is a piece of knowledge, perfectly true, laboriously 
proved, necessary for writing Greek iambics ; and most of us who profess 
to know the classical languages would be ashamed of being without it. 
Well, how far does it go ? Probably — though not certainly, for there is 
the widely reaching element of chance, seldom sufficiently recognised in 
philology — probably this practice corresponds, if we could only see it, to 
some sentiment lurking in the Athenian mind. The person who knows 



310 EDWAED BOWEN 

thoroughly half a hundred of such canons, will have a better equipment 
for ransacking and mastering Greek ideas than another who does not. 
That is to say, a minute acquaintance with words and phrases does in the 
end, and through much patience, help the clever man to place himself 
more fully at the point of view of an Athenian. 

Let this be granted ; and now let us glance at the result. Is it gene- 
rally the case, that the ' beautiful scholar ' is the man who brings out 
most treasures from the chambers the dim light of which is clearer to 
him than to others ? Is it not more often found that his long toil has 
made him confound the means with the end, and value his scholarship in 
regard of itself alone ? The main object of seeing distinctly what Plato 
and Cicero thought, is that one may be able to look on all questions not 
only on the side which they now present, but on that also which they 
turned to observers long ago ; to gain, as it were, a kind of intellectual 
parallax in contemplating the problems of life. Can it be fairly claimed, 
that high scholarship, the higher it reaches, attains more completely this 
object ? The reverse notoriously is the case. We know well enough what 
becomes of the man who gives up his time to particles. He is not the 
man to whom, in nine cases out of ten, his generation turns for help. 
There grows upon a society of ' beautiful scholars ' a distaste for things in 
which taste and refinement have little room for display, and in which 
breadth is more important than accuracy ; and the result is a lack of 
sympathy with human struggles and cares. Let some social or political 
movement arise, in which a man of real intellectual power, real eloquence, 
and evident sincerity aspires, in spite of ignorance of the classics, to take 
a leading part. He will find favour with but a minority of the writers of 
dictionaries and grammars. One will see narrowness of mind, another 
will insist on discovering vulgarity of tone. With some he will be too 
base in thought, with others coarse in manner. But all will be down 
upon his language. A man of classical education, we shall hear, would 
never have spoken of the ' works ' of Thucydides ; a man of real culture 
could never value the penny press as a means of popular instruction. He 
mispronounced an English word last session ; he did not understand when 
an allusion was made to Patroclus ; to save his life he could not cap a 
line in the second book of the iEneid : 

Et les moindres defauts de ce grossier genie 
Sont ou le pleonasuie, ou la cacophonie. 

How much better to be able to set a common-room right upon some 
mystic conceit of iEschylus, or correct a class of boys (out of their Primer 
on the gender of clunis and splen. 

It is not, however, the object of this essay to disparage the know- 
ledge of Latin and Greek. They may be purchased, and often are, at 
too high a price ; but those who have gained them most easily will be 
least likely to hold them too dear. Montaigne was not a man disposed 
to shut his eyes to the world around him, because he had learnt to speak 
Latin before he was able to write French. The advocates of a natural 



TEACHING BY MEANS OF GEAMMAE 311 

and easy method of classical teaching are sometimes challenged to give 
instances of the success of their system. It is certainly not easy to do 
so, for of late years the grammar writers have had it all their own way, 
and the one German apostle of a natural mode of teaching finished his 
career in prison ; but the results of the teaching of Jacotot in France 
and Belgium are such as have never been surpassed, and it will be time 
enough to pronounce a system impossible when in learning any modern 
language we cease to practise it ourselves. At any rate, there is good 
enough authority for learning Latin in this way. Milton distinctly urges 
it, and Locke in substance ; but it is older than either. ' Our most 
noble Queen Elizabeth,' says Eoger Ascham, ' never yet took Greek nor 
Latin grammar in her hand after the first declining of a noun and a 
verb.' In a year or two, by copious translation and re-translation, she 
learnt both languages well. It was with Lilly's Grammar that the more 
pedantic system came in ; and that Grammar, as its preface shows, was 
never originally intended to be learnt consecutively or by rote. 

It has been said, with some degree of truth, that learning by heart is 
the great intellectual vice of boys. Perhaps it would be fairer to say 
that the tendency is so strong that it is almost certain to be misapplied. 
With boys of good or average memory — and none others ought to learn 
classics — the tendency will be directed rightly if they are made to learn 
examples of construction by heart, and carefully prevented from 
embodying the doctrines taught them in any set form of words. In the 
Primer which has lately been put into the hands of the boys at most of 
the public schools, the first two pages of syntax consist of words of an 
average length of about three syllables each. Now there is no doubt 
that a boy of good memory will learn these, in time, to whatever degree 
of perfection his masters care to enforce ; and if they were written back- 
wards he would learn them almost as easily. But the idea that a young 
boy will ever think in polysyllables is almost humorous. The better he 
knows the words, indeed, the less will be, in many cases, his attempt to 
attach a meaning to them. The parrot does not only not think, but it 
even prevents itself from thinking. The pupil who is reading his Euclid 
will know it less well, for purposes of culture, if he attempts to commit 
it to memory. "What is the reason that we have given up the notion 
of enforcing the duties of morality upon the rising generation by means of 
memorial precepts in English or Latin prose ? It is not that the ideas of 
duty which they would convey are less likely than in former times to meet 
with illustrations in common life. It is simply because the duty is in 
most cases not a matter of formula ; and even when it is so, the words 
of a formula have a tendency to remain in the corner of the memory 
where they have been placed. The same is true of Latin composition. 
A very few memorial rules are useful in cases where usage alone is a 
guide to what is correct ; but even these have no educational value what- 
ever, and any other than these absolutely interfere with the right under- 
standing of a principle. 

There has been some discussion during the past year with regard to 



312 EDWAED BOWEN 

the introduction into the chief public schools of Dr. Kennedy's ' Public 
School Primer.' Into the merits of the book itself it is not necessary now 
to enter, because, in the first place, it is irrevocably accepted at the nine 
public schools ; and, in the second place, the general opi2iion of persons 
interested in education has already condemned the work. But, indepen- 
dently of its merits or demerits, the introduction of an universal text- 
book is distinctly a retrograde step in education. It was clearly felt to 
be so not long ago in Germany ; and the idea, which had been mooted 
a few years back, was dropped by general consent. It is with us much 
as if the study of Aristotle were imposed once more by the authority of 
the Church, or an adherence to the unities by that of the managers 
of the London theatres. It implies the belief, which will at once be 
recognised as a heresy, that there are such things as eternal and 
immutable rules of language ; that a Latin grammar is to be considered, 
not as an interpreter of Latin, but, as it were, its authorised legislator. 
What is meant by a declension ? Is it a division which the language 
consciously employed? Is it one which is certain, and beyond the 
domain of controversy ? Has it any claim to be regarded as the embodi- 
ment of a law in the sense in which the word is used in science ? 
Not at all. Distributing words into declensions is simply the best means 
that we can contrive for organising them in a way which shall appear 
to the memory as symmetrical. The analysis of words was pushed 
very far among the Romans, and yet Quintilian wrote a chapter on 
grammar without ever mentioning the classes of declensions at all. 
What is to be inferred is, not that declensions are not useful, but that 
the division is an arbitrary one ; and that any plan of education can 
have but little confidence in its teaching which will bind itself for the 
next twenty or thirty years to believe in five declensions rather than in 
eight or ten. No reason can be given for the compulsory uniformity of 
English schools in their method of teaching the analysis of the Latin 
language, which would not equally tend to show that the Universities of 
Oxford and Cambridge are bound to adopt the same text-book of algebra 
for continuous use. This might easily be done, and an inferior book be 
stereotyped for a long time to come. As it is, fresh books supersede one 
another as the methods of algebraical working improve, and the reign of 
a single author at Cambridge lasts sometimes two years, sometimes 
twenty. In the teaching of languages, as a matter of fact, one good 
teacher will have one way of instructing, and another another. Common 
sense points out that if a boy only learns a thing well, it matters little 
in what way he has reached his knowledge. As for bad teachers, they 
will simply save their credit and their labour by teaching the Primer 
straight through by heart. 

One is driven, sometimes, in thinking of these and similar mistakes, 
to the verge of asserting that books are the great obstacle to education. 
Whether this be too audacious a paradox or not, our teaching wants sadly 
to be humanised. There will be some gain, no doubt, when it is once 



TEACHING BY MEANS OF GRAMMAR 313 

clearly understood that there is no absolute connection between riches and 
the dead languages, and that a boy need not in every case be set down to 
a course of study for which he may be wholly unfit, just because his 
parents or guardians happen to be able to pay for it. But is it too much 
to hope that the classical teaching itself may some day cease to be the 
dull routine which it now so often is ? It may have been remarked that 
in considering the reasons for which grammar may be taught, we have 
omitted the second of our three ideas — the one which considers that the 
difficulties in a course of study ought to be left there as introducing a 
moral education in the struggle which is necessary for overcoming them. 
A person who will assert this is beyond the pale of argument. It is not 
worth while to discuss whether a method ought to be easy or hard. But 
we should even go on to say that it is the duty of a teacher not to rest 
as long as any difficulty exists which by any change of method can be 
removed. Involuntary learning is of as little use to the mind as involun- 
tary exercise to the body. 

Now it is certain that a large proportion of boys dislike the work 
which they have to do. Some like it ; some are indifferent ; a great many 
simply hate it. We maintain that an educator of boys has no business 
to be satisfied as long as this is the case. A very few may dislike all 
intellectual labour, just as a very few men dislike it ; but these cases 
are as rare with boys as with men. The great mass of human beings, 
whether young or old, have appetites for mental food of some kind, and 
the reason that so many turn away from it is, that what is given them is 
not what they can digest. There is a sort of incongruity, which falls 
little short of injustice, in punishing a boy for being idle, when we know 
that the work which the system of his school exacts is as cramping and 
distorting to his mind as an ill-fitting boot to the foot. No one would 
claim indeed that every pupil shall have his tastes suited with minute 
accuracy ; and the energy of a boy, if he is in good health, and otherwise 
happy, will carry him through minor difficulties. But no young boy 
since the world began has liked a Latin syntax, or a ' formation of 
tenses,' or felt anything in them for his mind to fasten upon and care for. 
Consider the case of a stupid boy, or an unclassical boy, at school, and the 
load of repulsive labour which we lay upon him. For many hours every 
day we expect him to devote himself, without hope of distinction or 
reward, to a subject which he dislikes and fears. He has no interest in 
it ; he has no expectation of being the better for it ; he never does well ; 
he rarely escapes doing ill. He is sometimes treated with strictness for 
faults to which the successful among his neighbours have no temptation ; 
and, when he is not visited with punishment, he at least is often regarded 
with contempt. He may be full of lively sympathies, eager after things 
that interest him, willing even to sacrifice something for the sake of 
becoming Aviser ; but all that he gets in the way of intellectual education 
is a closer familiarity with a jargon the existence of which in the world 
seems to him to controvert the Argument from Design, and the chance 



314 EDWAED BOWEN 

scraps of historical and literary knowledge which fall from the lips of his 
routine-bound master. If only it could be regarded as an established 
truth that the office of a teacher is, more than anything else, to educate 
his pupils ; to cause their minds to grow and work, rather than simply 
to induce them to receive ; to look to labour rather than to weigh specific 
results ; to make sure at the end of a school-half that each one of those 
entrusted to him has had something to interest him, quicken him, cause 
him to believe in knowledge, rather than simply to repeat certain pages 
of a book without a mistake — then we might begin to fancy the golden 
time was near at hand when boys will come up to their lessons, as they 
surely ought, with as little hesitation and repugnance as that with which 
a man sits down to his work. 

This is indeed something worth being enthusiastic for. To convince 
boys that intellectual growth is noble, and intellectual labour happy, that 
they are travelling on no purposeless errand, mounting higher every step 
of the way, and may as truly enjoy the toil that lifts them above their 
former selves, as they enjoy a race or a climb ; to help the culture of 
their minds by every faculty of moral force, of physical vigour, of 
memory, of fancy, of humour, of pathos, of banter, that we have our- 
selves, and lead them to trust in knowledge, to hope for it, to cherish it ; 
this, succeed as it may here and fail there, quickened as it may be by 
health and sympathy, or deadened by fatigue or disappointment, is a 
work which has in it most of the elements which life needs to give it zest. 
It is not to be done by putting books before boys, and hearing them so 
much at a time ; or by offering prizes and punishments ; or by assuring 
them that every English gentleman knows Horace. It is by making it 
certain to the understanding of every one that we think the knowledge 
worth having ourselves, and mean in every possible way, by versatile oral 
teaching, by patient guidance, by tone and manner and look, by anger 
and pity, by determination even to amuse, by frank allowance for dullness 
and even for indolence, to help them to attain a little of what gives us 
such pleasure. A man, or an older pupil, can find this help in books ; a 
young boy needs it from the words and gestures of a teacher. There is 
no fear of loss of dignity. The work of teaching will be respected when 
the things that are taught begin to deserve respect. 

Above all, the work must be easy. Few boys are ever losers from find- 
ing their task too simple, for they can always aspire to learning what is 
harder; many have had their school career ruined from being set to 
attack what was too hard. It may be said, perhaps, that what was easy 
enough for past generations ought to be easy enough for the present. 
Those who urge this view may simply be asked whether they are satisfied 
with the working of the classical education that exists. We are not 
bound to depend upon Dr. Liddell's testimony that public schoolmen are 
generally ignorant of Greek and Latin, for there are obvious reasons 
which would prevent the Dean of Christ Church from forming a satis- 
factory opinion on the subject ; but, taking those who go to the University 
with those who do not, can the education that is given be said to be the 



TEACHING BY MEANS OF GEAMMAE 315 

best which modern ingenuity can contrive ? Allowing that the very best 
scholars can assimilate anything whatever, and that with the very worst it 
is next to useless to try at all, is it true to say that the average boys have 
a fair chance of making the most of their powers ? If not, there are two 
resources before the teacher. He can, as is elsewhere pointed out, vary 
and enlarge the basis of education ; he can also, as we have ventured in 
this essay to urge, teach classics so as to include more that is of rational 
interest and less that is of pedantic routine. 



316 EDWAKD BOWEN 



THE PEOPOSED CONTEOL OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 
BY THE UNIVEBSITIES 

[April 1872] 

The movement for subjecting the English Public Schools to the control 
of the Universities has been undertaken in such good faith, and is being 
pushed forward with such good intentions, that it must seem almost 
ungracious to meet it with hostile criticism. But I doubt seriously 
whether its promoters have ever clearly placed before themselves the 
exact objects at which they aim, or the distinct consequences which may 
ensue. This doubt is founded, partly on the history of the movement 
itself, and partly on the fact that those who are mainly concerned in it 
differ among themselves as to the desired objects to a degree which, in 
any political or religious agitation, would long ago have rendered co- 
operation impossible. I am still further induced to take this ground from 
the circumstance that it has not hitherto been my fortune to meet with 
any single person who professes on his own account, or with regard to the 
interests of the institution with which he is connected, to entertain a 
desire for such a control on its own intrinsic merits. 

The title of these pages is confessedly adopted ad invidiam ; and it 
will be part of rny purpose to show that it is applicable. But it will be 
necessary, in the first place, to mention how the movement arose, and to 
describe its present position. 

For the last two or three years the headmasters of some of the 
pubhc schools (I shall use the word with no narrow limitation, and define 
it as including all schools which may wish to adopt the title) have held 
some informal congresses at various places in the south of England, with 
the object of discussing matters of educational interest ; and, at one of the 
most numerous of these meetings, held the year before last at Sherborne, 
a committee was appointed to negotiate certain practical arrangements 
with the Latin professors at Oxford and Cambridge, with the Universities 
themselves, with various colleges, with the Government, and with other 
examining bodies. It is worth while to notice that the Universities were 
to be asked merely to provide a more satisfactory mode of matriculation, 
and the colleges to arrange their scholarship examinations more conve- 
niently ; while the Government were to be requested to institute a kind 
of degree examination for all boys at the period of their leaving school. 
Such was the scheme of the Sherborne meeting, as conveyed to their 
committee. The committee, however, changed the programme. On 



THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND THE UNIVERSITIES 317 

their own authority (and it is no business of mine, or of the public, to 
find fault with them) they determined to place (as I should call it) the 
schools under the patronage and control of the Universities ; to invite 
them to inspect the schools and report on their efficiency, and, in addition 
to this, to hold examinations of all boys at two stages of their school 
career, with a view to awarding certificates of satisfactory attainments. 
They also suggested that the Universities should accept these certificates 
as entitling the bearer to exemption from certain subsequent examina- 
tions ; a suggestion at which the Universities have not thus far shown 
themselves eager to grasp. Such was the plan as it left the hands of the 
committee, and as it remained when they presented their report. The 
conference of headmasters, when next they met at Highgate, adopted 
and approved, though not without some hesitation, the efforts of the 
committee. These efforts had not as yet led to any definite result ; and 
it is not uncharitable to surmise that the approval would perhaps have 
been less complete if the efforts had been more practically successful. 

I have been the more careful in sketching the history of these pro- 
posals, because it seems to me important to point out that they have 
originated in a manner which it is not unfair to describe as ' casual.' The 
assembly of headmasters, although of a friendly and unrepresentative 
character, is still an important body ; and the proposals in question have 
received from them a more or less formal sanction, though they have 
never gone so far, it will be noticed, as to express a distinct wish for the 
' inspection ' of their schools. But the desire that the Universities shall 
examine and inspect the working of the schools, and report upon their 
efficiency, did not as a matter of fact emanate from this body, nor has a 
wish to that effect been expressed, as far as I am aware, by any public 
body whatever, by any official personages, by any representatives of the 
outside public, or, indeed, by any persons of consideration whatever. 

This being the case, how are we to account for the cordial reception 
which the proposals have met with at Oxford and Cambridge ? Syndi- 
cates have been formed at both Universities, which have taken the great- 
est pains to arrange a course of action, and which, but for the fact that 
the two Universities, or those who represent them, seemed to have formed 
widely different conceptions of what was wanted, would have long ago 
found themselves in a position to propound a definite scheme. One of 
the irremediable differences, as I am given to understand, is no less than 
the admission or exclusion of the entire original plan, the only one which 
the meeting of headmasters has distinctly sanctioned, that of the leaving 
examinations for certificates of proficiency. Differences apart, the Uni- 
versities have taken up the idea of inspection and examination, and are 
at this moment hard at work upon it. This eagerness is not to be 
accounted for by the ambition to engross educational authority, and even 
if it were, I am not sure that it would be deserving of blame. It rather 
seems to proceed from a pure desire to be useful, and, in pursuance of 
that desire, to attempt any task which any one may suggest as possible. 
It is a trite observation, that when a person is suddenly awakened to a 



318 EDWAED BOWEN 

sense of his responsibilities, one of the earliest proofs which he gives of 
his nascent earnestness is the passion for awakening the same sense in 
others. There is no touch truer to nature in ' Tom Brown ' than when 
the friend on whom the hero had been hotly urging a particular course 
of moral reform cannot refrain, though much impressed, from comment- 
ing on the suddenness of the zeal. ' Very cool of Tom,' thought East, 
' seeing as how he only came out of Egypt himself last evening at bed- 
time.' The Universities came out of Egypt, I imagine, somewhere about 
the time of the passing of the first University Eeform Bill. Since then 
too much cannot be said for the energy with which they have been at 
work to reform abuses, and to place themselves at the head of education. 
Enlargement of studies, development of the professoriate, abolition of 
limitations, institution of local examinations — all mean increased work 
and usefulness. Only, if they proposed to organise the instruction of the 
navy or to control the working of a power-loom I should say that they 
were overstepping their natural functions. And they appear to me to 
transgress them equally if they claim to test and govern, otherwise than 
indirectly, the English public schools. 

The proposals which are being put forward may, however indefinite 
their shape, be considered as falling under two heads. 

1. It is proposed to appoint commissioners who shall be in readiness, 
in parties of two or more, to visit and inspect the schools, either examin- 
ing portions of them by written or viva voce questioning, or else super- 
intending such examination, to an extent sufficient to enable them to 
declare whether the work of the school is so conducted as to deserve the 
confidence of the public. 

2. It is proposed, once or oftener in the year, to hold an examination, 
either of boys leaving school, or of all boys of a certain age or ages, either 
in subjects taught at school or in those which the boys, or the Universi- 
ties, select, with the view of granting certificates, either with or without 
marks of distinction, to the successful candidates. 

It will thus be seen that, though to a slight extent they may appear 
to cover the same ground, the proposals of inspection and of leaving 
examinations are clearly distinguishable ; and it is to be regretted that 
neither hi the original suggestions nor, until lately, in the action of the 
University syndicates, do they appear to have been carefully distinguished. 
They seem to me to contain the elements of what is undesirable in very 
different degrees. The scheme of inspection is, I shall urge, vicious both 
in conception and practice ; that of leaving examinations is at worst 
harmless in idea, but is so beset with difficulties that no success can be 
hoped for at the present time from its action. 

In representing the weakness of the inspection scheme, I am met with 
the difficulty that the arguments in its favour have to be supplied almost 
from conjecture. "When a Government inspector visits a coal-mine or a 
factory, or reports on a primary school, one knows pretty well what the 
object of the visit is, and can judge of its necessity. Certain definite 
rules of law have to be complied with, and it needs ocular inspection to 



THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND THE UNIVEES1TIES 319 

pronounce that this has been done. Certain specified results have to be 
attained, and national payments depend on their entire or partial attain- 
ment. Compare this organisation with what is proposed in the case of a 
public school. What definite laws (I wish there were a few) can we 
either keep or break ? "What definite results can be placed in the column 
of a return, out of all the manifold influences which go towards constitu- 
ting an education ? We shall be told that this inspection will supply a 
valuable stimulus, to the teachers towards increasing their assiduity, to 
the scholars towards learning their lessons. I emphatically deny the 
necessity of such a stimulus. Even Dr. Ridding, the chairman of the 
very committee which lent itself to the original suggestion, declares 
candidly that he feels and sees no need of it. It is a mere popular error 
to suppose that public schools at present need a stimulus as regards 
amount of work. We ' came out of Egypt ' in Dr. Arnold's time, and 
have been fighting Amalekites ever since ; and one of the principal foes, 
that of simple idleness, we may now consider that we have fairly 
vanquished. I grant that the schools have many and serious faults ; we 
are not yet fully drinking the rivers of milk and honey; we make 
mistakes, we are cowardly, we are shortsighted, we have (I shall not 
deny) radical and perhaps incurable defects. But they are not mistakes 
or defects which a University inspector can either disclose or cure. They 
are not such as need a ' stimulus.' Heaven help the school which sees 
so little of its own shortcomings as to suppose that the report of a commis- 
sioner from Oxford or Cambridge can reveal or obscure their existence ! 

I have just quoted Dr. Bidding's avowal that he has no wish of his 
own for the stimulus of which I have been speaking. But he goes on to 
say that the public seem to wish it. Granting for a moment that this is 
the case — assuming, that is, a proposition for which no evidence has yet 
been shown — what ground is there for supposing that an inspection by 
the Universities is the right way to tell the public what they want ? 
Parents wish, it is suggested, to know which are the best schools to 
which they may send their sons. Does any person with the smallest 
experience in education suppose that the reports of these delegates will 
be a body of evidence on which they may rely for a decision ? As it is, 
the materials for a choice are abundant. Between the public schools at 
the present moment there exists the keenest rivalry, and it is as easy to 
ascertain their relative merits and defects as those of a college or a 
watering-place. In all probability the grounds for choosing this or that 
school must be often grotesque in their variety. But, while the parent is 
justly culpable who sends his son to Harrow because his second cousin 
had a friend there, or because Lord Byron carved his name on the desks, 
he is probably not much more irrational than another would be who 
should select it because a senior classic of Cambridge averred that some 
particular form had learnt their irregular verbs well. Why, then, do we 
have examiners now from the Universities for the work of the higher 
forms ? In the first place, because labour is so heavy that fresh hands 
must be called in to do it ; then because an examiner may sometimes 



320 EDWAED BOWEN 

introduce a new stamp of ideas, suggest weak points in scholarship, give 
a little dignity to the work of those boys whose efforts he is testing ; and 
lastly, because it seems to some people only fair that the most important 
prizes of a school should be assigned by a person who cannot possibly be 
biassed in the award. But which of these objects can be attained by a 
scholar who comes down to superintend a portion of the examination of 
a portion of the school in a portion of the work which has been done in 
a portion of the year ? I read, on the authority of one of the head- 
masters, that he may at all events ' sink a shaft ' in the school, and test 
the whole by a part. The simile exactly suits my argument. What 
value would be set on the report of a mineralogist who would propose, by 
sinking a shaft of casual depth in a casual valley, to form an estimate of 
the metalliferous wealth of Cornwall ? 

Let it be remembered that it is this, and this only, which it is proposed 
to carry out. The inspector of a primary school, who has to report on 
a definite issue with reference to distinct and binding standards, examines 
personally every child in the building, and pronounces a positive judg- 
ment upon each. In the case of a boarding school, with its various 
culture and complex organisation, the University inspector of the future 
will take a specimen here and there of the results, and write word to his 
central Board what he thinks the institution is worth. He might as well 
try to estimate the working of a parish by hearing the village choir sing. 
' So far as to enable them to report on the general character and efficiency 
of the whole.' Are we talking of the inspecting of schools or the tasting 
of cheeses ? And yet everyone knows that a complete examination of 
the results even in one single subject would be next door to an impossi- 
bility. The expense alone would put it out of the question. Nor if this 
were even possible would it render the result a satisfactory one. I cannot 
but think that copies must still be extant of the letters which were written 
ten years ago by the authorities of the Seven Schools, when the Royal 
Commission hinted that perhaps it might be well to submit the whole 
body of pupils to an examination. If they are still in existence, they 
might possibly furnish an interesting supplement to the suggestions of 
the committee of 1871. 

Is this really what is most important in schools, the capability of 
passing an examination so as to satisfy, according to certain vague 
standards, the taste of an inspector in Latin or Greek ? We all are 
convinced of the contrary. A school is good if it rnakes the best of its 
materials, if it is full of good traditions, if its standard of intellectual 
interest is high, if it is strict in discipline, if it is vigorous in games, if its 
teachers are gentle and just, if its organisation is careful and sensible, 
if it is well ordered in diet, service, ventilation, drainage, space ; and also 
if it attains, as the crown of its merits, what I understand to be the very 
cream of University distinction, the proper appreciation of the sound of 
the Roman consonants. Give me an envoy from the Universities who 
can pronounce on all those at a single visit, and I will say not a word 
against his mission. But, I shall hear, it is worth while to have an 



THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND THE UNIVEESITIES 321 

estimate of the pupil's knowledge of Latin, even granting that the judg- 
ment is as partial and limited as it must needs thus be. Why ? Merely 
for the purpose of emphasising a fallacy ? Merely in order that the 
public may be induced to look upon a part as the whole, and consider 
that as a complete estimate which all those concerned will know to be 
utterly insufficient ? ' But the Universities do this to a certain extent 
already by their scholarships, and nobody complains. They are allowed, 
without any challenge, to give glory to schools by success in intellectual 
competitions alone, and those of a limited kind.' Nobody complains, I 
reply, because nobody has anything better to suggest. It is clear that 
this is all that they can possibly do. It is desirable that intellectual 
success should be rewarded, and schools have, heaven knows, enough 
interest already in winning these prizes and payments. I am told on the 
best authority, that at a certain school every scholarship gained at the 
University is as tangibly marked in the applications for entrance during 
the following week as if it were registered on a thermometer. Surely we 
do not want still further to persuade the public that these results alone 
are the standard by which our work is to be valued, even though it were 
possible for a score of examiners, at the cost of a year's income, to satisfy 
themselves to the last shred of knowledge on the attainments of every 
pupil in the school. How much stronger the argument becomes, how 
much more fallacious the fallacy offered to the intelligence of parents, 
when, instead of this searching inquiry, there is to be an inspector with 
the office merely of a roaring lion, who is to go about seeking some one to 
examine, grasping at an induction for morsels of evidence, listening to a 
lesson here, reading an exercise there, and returning to his Athens much 
(as I should venture to picture it) with the feeling that Peisthetaerus must 
have experienced after his sojourn in the Kegion of the Birds, with the 
sense that he has been listening for a couple of days and nights to one 
universal gabble ! 

I am convinced that the sketch which I have drawn of the value of 
an inspector's work will not be considered overdrawn by anyone who 
accepts the premisses with which I started ; which are, that schools have 
other merits than those which an examination can test : that the proposed 
inspector's office is to be simply that of a literary examiner : and that 
even this function is to be exercised in a partial manner. But I come 
now to what is the most serious, because the most far-reaching, danger of 
the whole scheme. When we were discussing the notion of a stimulus 
which this plan proposes to offer, it must have occurred to many to 
rejoin that though a mere stimulus to work might be superfluous, it 
would at least be useful to have some external guide to direct the 
energies of the school in the right direction, to correct extravagances, 
to keep the teaching in the proper or the established groove. 

In other words, the schools are to be controlled by the Universities. 
The delegates, who may, it is suggested, be either resident or non-resident 
graduates, are to train the institutions which they visit in the way in 
which they should go. They are to hint that some subjects or some 

Y 



324 EDWAKD BOWEN 

threatening because the project is of narrower range. Its evils will be 
brought to a minimum, while, on the other hand, its practical difficulties 
will reach a climax, if it be extended, as it surely ought to be, to the 
entire youth of the country. It is fair to confess that, with the extension 
made, a simultaneous examination of all boys of a certain age by a com- 
bined Board from the Universities would have much to recommend it, 
and the necessity of the case would operate towards rendering such an 
examination as elastic as possible. But, remembering the enormous 
labour and the serious difficulties which the University of London has to 
face in carrying out a similar plan, it would require a very sanguine con- 
fidence to believe that a scheme of the kind is likely to be adopted ; and 
were it even moderately easy, it would be a function which would be per- 
formed equally well, and ultimately much better, by a central public 
authority. The Universities have now devoted at least enough of their 
energies to examining, and it would be well that the next steps of pro- 
gress for some time to come should lie in the direction of further teaching. 
Delegates would be quite as usefully employed in instruction at Birming- 
ham and Bradford as in adding to the already abundant examination of 
boys whose life is one continual test. But, however this may be, the 
head and front of the objection to the plan is its tendency to cramp study. 
When a pupil of mine tells me that he is about to try and prepare himself 
for some special external examination, it is with but little exaggeration that 
I mentally reply, ' Then so ends your rational education.' I am quite for 
competition in the public service, because I know no better mode of selec- 
tion ; but its results are annoying enough already without a fresh set of 
fetters from the Universities. To use Dr. Bidding's admirable phrase, 
which is a perfect addition to the stores of the language, the chief effect 
of such an examination would be its operation as a negative stimulus. 

If complete, systematic, and open to all the country, such a test would 
be open, I have urged, to fewer objections, and would at any rate confer 
a general benefit, even though at the cost of the liberty of school teaching. 
If confined to particular schools, it would retain this great disadvantage, 
and from the necessarily varying standard would be misleading and 
wasteful of energy. If limited to the subjects taught at the school, and 
regulated according to the proportion which these subjects bear to one 
another, it would cease indeed to be cramping, though it would still be 
delusive, and its full execution next door to impossible ; but it does not 
appear what object would be served by its existence. You cannot compare 
the results of two examinations of which the materials vary, nor can you 
offer University advantages in return for successes of which you have not 
beforehand determined the conditions. 

But, it is gravely argued, it is better to fall into the hands of one's 
friends than of one's enemies ; if the Universities do not institute these 
leaving examinations (and perhaps these inspections too), the Govern- 
ment will. In the first place, I demur to the prophecy. There seems no 
reason whatever for the supposition that the Government intend to 
interfere in the education of the schools, except the clauses in the second 
part of Mr. Forster's Endowed Schools Bill, which were rashly conceived 



THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND THE UNIVEESITIES 325 

and quickly dropped out of sight ; and the Education Department has far 
too much work on its hands at present to be likely to undertake any fresh 
labour on so vast a scale. But, in the second place, I am far from being 
convinced that the work, if done at all, would not be better done by a 
central department of the public service. It would so avoid the difficulty 
which the co-operation of two independent bodies must involve, and it 
would always be open to the influence, which is extremely strong, of the 
leading public schools. It is argued that ' we know the animus ' of" the 
Universities but not of the Government. Surely, if we are to be examined 
and inspected at all, it would be more satisfactory on public grounds to 
rely on the verdict of judges who have no animus of any kind to start 
with. I should prefer that the thing should not be done at all at present, 
because, as was said above, we are in a period of educational experiment, 
and perhaps transition ; but in twenty or thirty years' time it is possible 
that, without more injury than all control inherently involves, the 
Minister of Education may bring forward a plan similar to that of the 
German leaving examinations, with the concurrence of public opinion, 
and even with some advantage to the schools. 

The Abihirienten-priificngen of Germany are constantly being brought 
forward in connection with this argument ; and it seems to be thought 
that, whether the conditions of the examination are similar or not, the 
fact that German boys are examined on leaving school is a solid fact 
which has in itself all the weight of a logical process. Let us recall a 
few of these conditions. The Abiturienten examinations are conducted 
mainly by the teachers of the schools ; they take place at the national 
day-schools only ; they are very wide in their range ; they are super- 
vised by Government officers ; they deal not only with results but with 
training, as they demand that a certain length of time shall have been 
spent in the advanced classes of the school ; they bear record of morality 
and diligence ; they extend over bodies far larger than our English 
schools, being in connection with a national educational system; and, 
most important of all, they confer a right of entrance to the Universities, 
to which there is no other access. Let us put this question distinctly to 
the Oxford and Cambridge syndicates. If we submit to the burden of 
these leaving examinations (inspection being put aside), and confer on 
them the right of testing us at their pleasure, what are they prepared to 
offer in return ? Do they engage that they will admit none to residence 
but those who have satisfied the standards ? Do they undertake to 
exempt those who have done so from any further matriculation test ? 
Do they promise that the colleges as well as the University shall consider 
these certificates as sufficient ? Are they even disposed to hold out any 
one definite exemption or privilege which shall attach to the fortunate 
candidates with whom they shall have pronounced themselves satisfied ? 
Surely, some engagements of this nature must accompany the scheme of 
school examinations if they are seriously offered for acceptance. It 
would be embarrassing enough to have these examinations at all ; but the 
dose might be sweetened by a bribe. 



324 EDWAED BOWEN 

threatening because the project is of narrower range. Its evils will be 
brought to a minimum, while, on the other hand, its practical difficulties 
will reach a climax, if it be extended, as it surely ought to be, to the 
entire youth of the country. It is fair to confess that, with the extension 
made, a simultaneous examination of all boys of a certain age by a com- 
bined Board from the Universities would have much to recommend it, 
and the necessity of the case would operate towards rendering such an 
examination as elastic as possible. But, remembering the enormous 
labour and the serious difficulties which the University of London has to 
face in carrying out a similar plan, it would require a very sanguine con- 
fidence to believe that a scheme of the kind is likely to be adopted ; and 
were it even moderately easy, it would be a function which would be per- 
formed equally well, and ultimately much better, by a central public 
authority. The Universities have now devoted at least enough of their 
energies to examining, and it would be well that the next steps of pro- 
gress for some time to come should lie in the direction of further teaching. 
Delegates would be quite as usefully employed in instruction at Birming- 
ham and Bradford as in adding to the already abundant examination of 
boys whose life is one continual test. But, however this may be, the 
head and front of the objection to the plan is its tendency to cramp study. 
When a pupil of mine tells me that he is about to try and prepare himself 
for some special external examination, it is with but little exaggeration that 
I mentally reply, ' Then so ends your rational education.' I am quite for 
competition in the public service, because I know no better mode of selec- 
tion ; but its results are annoying enough already without a fresh set of 
fetters from the Universities. To use Dr. Bidding's admirable phrase, 
which is a perfect addition to the stores of the language, the chief effect 
of such an examination would be its operation as a negative stimulus. 

If complete, systematic, and open to all the country, such a test would 
be open, I have urged, to fewer objections, and would at any rate confer 
a general benefit, even though at the cost of the liberty of school teaching. 
If confined to particular schools, it would retain this great disadvantage, 
and from the necessarily varying standard would be misleading and 
wasteful of energy. If limited to the subjects taught at the school, and 
regulated according to the proportion which these subjects bear to one 
another, it would cease indeed to be cramping, though it would still be 
delusive, and its full execution next door to impossible ; but it does not 
appear what object would be served by its existence. You cannot compare 
the results of two examinations of which the materials vary, nor can you 
offer University advantages in return for successes of which you have not 
beforehand determined the conditions. 

But, it is gravely argued, it is better to fall into the hands of one's 
friends than of one's enemies ; if the Universities do not institute these 
leaving examinations (and perhaps these inspections too), the Govern- 
ment will. In the first place, I demur to the prophecy. There seems no 
reason whatever for the supposition that the Government intend to 
interfere in the education of the schools, except the clauses in the second 
part of Mr. Forster's Endowed Schools Bill, which were rashly conceived 



THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND THE UNIVEESITIES 325 

and quickly dropped out of sight ; and the Education Department has far 
too much work on its hands at present to be likely to undertake any fresh 
labour on so vast a scale. But, in the second place, I am far from being 
convinced that the work, if done at all, would not be better done by a 
central department of the public service. It would so avoid the difficulty 
which the co-operation of two independent bodies must involve, and it 
would always be open to the influence, which is extremely strong, of the 
leading public schools. It is argued that ' we know the animus ' of the 
Universities but not of the Government. Surely, if we are to be examined 
and inspected at all, it would be more satisfactory on public grounds to 
rely on the verdict of judges who have no animus of any kind to start 
with. I should prefer that the thing should not be done at all at present, 
because, as was said above, we are in a period of educational experiment, 
and perhaps transition ; but in twenty or thirty years' time it is possible 
that, without more injury than all control inherently involves, the 
Minister of Education may bring forward a plan similar to that of the 
German leaving examinations, with the concurrence of public opinion, 
and even with some advantage to the schools. 

The Abiturienten-pr •iifung en of Germany are constantly being brought 
forward in connection with this argument ; and it seems to be thought 
that, whether the conditions of the examination are similar or not, the 
fact that German boys are examined on leaving school is a solid fact 
which has in itself all the weight of a logical process. Let us recall a 
few of these conditions. The Abiturienten examinations are conducted 
mainly by the teachers of the schools ; they take place at the national 
day-schools only ; they are very wide in their range ; they are super- 
vised by Government officers ; they deal not only with results but with 
training, as they demand that a certain length of time shall have been 
spent in the advanced classes of the school ; they bear record of morality 
and diligence ; they extend over bodies far larger than our English 
schools, being in connection with a national educational system ; and, 
most important of all, they confer a right of entrance to the Universities, 
to which there is no other access. Let us put this question distinctly to 
the Oxford and Cambridge syndicates. If we submit to the burden of 
these leaving examinations (inspection being put aside), and confer on 
them the right of testing us at their pleasure, what are they prepared to 
offer in return ? Do they engage that they will admit none to residence 
but those who have satisfied the standards ? Do they undertake to 
exempt those who have done so from any further matriculation test ? 
Do they promise that the colleges as well as the University shall consider 
these certificates as sufficient ? Are they even disposed to hold out any 
one definite exemption or privilege which shall attach to the fortunate 
candidates with whom they shall have pronounced themselves satisfied ? 
Surely, some engagements of this nature must accompany the scheme of 
school examinations if they are seriously offered for acceptance. It 
would be embarrassing enough to have these examinations at all ; but the 
dose might be sweetened by a bribe. 



326 EDWAED BOWEN 

Such are the arguments which have occurred to me against the pro- 
posal for this regular examination and inspection of the public schools 
by commissioners from Oxford and Cambridge. If they can be fairly 
answered, I shall only be glad to think that a new field has been found 
for the growing energy of the Universities. If not, I hope that the 
schools may be left with their present limited freedom, and can only 
suggest that the Universities should devote themselves instead to 
examining and inspecting one another. The proposal lacks, as it seems 
to me, all the elements of a bond fide reform. It corresponds to no 
pressing needs, it leads to no definite ends : it is doubtful whether it 
originates in any deliberate expression of opinion on the part of its 
reputed authors. But I should be very sorry to give the impression that 
I consider no reform at all necessary, and no inspection desirable. I am 
not one of those who believe that the schools can be safely left altogether 
to themselves, or that the Universities have no duties in connection with 
them. I will conclude this paper accordingly by mentioning, with but 
little argument, the reforms which I should be glad to see accomplished, 
and which would meet, I think, all reasonable demands. The points 
I shall set down are those which bear upon the relation of the schools to 
the public, and of the Universities to the schools. 

1. There should be a Council of Education, under the department of 
the Minister of Education, charged with the duty of inspecting the public 
schools of the country in all matters that relate to finance. It remains 
yet to be seen what relations in matters of teaching and discipline the 
new governing bodies of the schools will bear to the headmasters, and 
what share they will take in supervision of studies. Without expressing 
any opinion on the subject, I will venture to predict that those relations 
will, as a matter of fact, become in future years somewhat different from 
those which have hitherto existed. However this may be, the governing 
bodies and the teachers are together competent, under the control of 
public opinion, to settle matters of organisation and instruction. But the 
nation has a right to make sure that there shall be no jobs ; and the 
auditing of the school accounts should at first be the principal work of the 
proposed Council. In future years the same body will form the centre 
round which may gather, slowly and tentatively, a system of national 
secondary edxication ; but the experience of French Government control 
is sufficient to warn us against proceeding otherwise than with the 
greatest caution in the matter. 

2. Further, and much more systematic, steps might be taken by the 
colleges towards organising their entrance examinations in such a way as 
not to interfere with school studies. All the authorities, when appealed 
to, declare that they see the inconvenience of the present system, but are 
powerless to effect a remedy. It has sometimes occurred to me to wonder 
how many months it would take to effect a cure, if the headmasters of 
half a dozen of the principal schools were to declare that henceforward 
no boy should leave his work for a temporary sojourn at the University 
except in the months of January and June. I do not advocate this course, 



THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND THE UNIVEESITIES 327 

which would be churlish, and it ih> pleasant to keep the relation of the 
colleges and the schools on the cordial footing on which they happily 
stand at present ; but it is not too much to suggest that some slight 
degree of pressure from without might induce a more zealous co-operation 
at the Universities. 

3. The same considerations apply to the competition for scholarships, 
though here the difficulties of co-operation are presumably, indeed neces- 
sarily, greater. 

4. It is hardly necessary to point out as indispensable in the interest 
of the schools a further enlargement of the University curriculum ; for 
both Universities seem alive to the importance of the step, and though 
they proceed slowly, it may be hoped that they proceed surely. 

5. The principal of all the reforms which deserve consideration at the 
hands of schools and Universities, though it lies chiefly in the hands of 
the latter, is the lowering of the age of the students. It is too large a 
matter, and not sufficiently germane to the immediate subject of these 
pages to discuss ; but it may be included in the list of reforms which the 
committee of headmasters would do well to bring before the syndicates 
which are appointed to treat with them. It seems to me certain that the 
schools keep boys too old : that the Universities accept them too late and 
keep them too long : and that if the average age were a couple of years 
younger, the number of those who would be able to look forward to a 
University education would be largely increased. I should be glad to see 
a statute passed at once that no undergraduate should be received (unless 
exceptionally) after his nineteenth birthday, or admitted to his final 
examination after his twenty-second : and I should hope that the standard 
might eventually be placed a year younger still. Then, if it were thought 
desirable, two years or two years and a half might be given to additional 
study by those who chose to proceed to a further examination for the 
degree of Master of Arts. If such a regulation as the above were insisted 
on at Oxford and Cambridge, the schools would be able, and might bind 
themselves, to refuse to keep any boy who had passed the age fixed for 
University entrance. 

6. I cannot but think the time has come when the headmasters might 
with advantage concert a plan for carrying out a conscience clause in thoir 
schools, either by the distinct enunciation of its principle or by adopting 
such arrangements as would involve its essence. 

7. In the event of such a change in the tenure of Fellowships as 
should render essential to the receipt of a dividend from college funds 
some service done in teaching either at the Universities themselves, or at 
other centres of instruction in the provinces, it would be worth considering 
whether the less richly endowed schools might not be allowed to confer 
such a title to the receipt of the payment, in virtue of assistance which 
the holder of the Fellowship might give towards their school work. 



328 EDWAED BOWEN 



VI 

GAMES: A 'U.U.' ESSAY 1 

[1884] 

I am going to write a plain, practical discourse, with no jokes or 
paradoxes or epigrams, and one which will be intelligible to the meanest 
capacity here. I had thought at first of describing, after the maimer of 
Swift or Erewhon, and with a view of suggestive contrast, a school in 
which the development of the body was the primary concern with boys — 
was, in the time-honoured phrase, ' what they came there for ' — and the 
cultivation of the mind was considered laudable and useful if only undue 
time were not thrown away upon it ; but I stopped this train of fancy, 
from finding that I had drifted into something curiously like the educa- 
tion of ancient Athens. I also had it in my mind to put before the 
meeting an imitation of a Platonic dialogue, in which it would be shown 
from first principles that the sort of person who ia fit to bowl is also the 
sort of person who is fit to bat, and should combine the two functions 
simultaneously (why how not ? Thesetetus would say) — and, that a high 
score being the right thing, it would follow— would it not ? — that the best 
and more perfect hit was the hit which went highest (it would seem so, 
says Philebus), and so on. Racks shall not tear from me the reason for 
which I in the end abandoned this brilliant idea. And, in the end, I fell 
back upon the plainest prose, and am much confused by having just read 
in Ruskin that the man who can do things best is always the man who 
can discourse upon them worst ; so that, if this essay is tame and barren, 
it follows that my cricket average is likely to be something quite out of 
the common. I have often been told that the mind is superior to the 
body ; I do not think this has ever been proved. It seems to me to be 
of the nature of those things which are called pious beliefs. As a rough 
test, let us think what it is that we most value our friends for : is it for 
their delicate choice in optatives, which my friend the composition-master 
assures me is the loftiest mental development which we can put before 
our youth ; or is it their temper — in other words, their digestion — which 
is their body ? That isn't fan, says the composition-master : no cogent 
argument ever is in the opinion of the cogee. He will urge that the 
optatives are not the tip-top greatness, but only go with it and connote it. 
Well, drop the digestion itself too, and put instead the fine complexion 
and something round the chest and proper coloured hair which connote 

1 Reprinted by permission from the Journal of Education. 



GAMES 329 

it. I don't think the scale has turned. Tom Hughes says somewhere 
that your real friend is the man whom, if you saw alone and penniless 
and naked in the street among the carriages, you would take and dress 
and feed and be a brother to. Well, everyone knows you wouldn't if he 
had a decided squint. Anyhow, you wouldn't merely because you knew 
he was clever. How is it practically with us ? I certainly don't think I 
have any one really very ugly friend (I smile to myself as I write this, to 
think how when I read it I shall see every one furtively glancing at his 
neighbour to see if he is looking at him). I repeat, I haven't any very 
ugly friend. And, on the other hand, I must say of some of my friends, 
with all respect, that their minds and intelligences are at any rate no 
better than they should be. 

Well, then, let us assume, till the contrary is proved, that body is as 
important as mind (I speak popularly for convenience : gentlemen who 
have been reading their ' magazine literature diligently can of course 
translate this into the proper dialect) — that a well-developed tendo 
Achillis is about equal in value to firm grounding in grammar, that you 
may put into the same sort of category a tendency to false quantities and 
to freckles. Now, will anybody here please to be good enough to tell me 
why we schoolmasters should give all our care and thought, from one end 
of the year to the other, to one side of this equation, and leave the other 
to take care of itself ? 

I seem to hear the tinkling of many answers — ' Because boys like 
bodily exercise well enough as it is.' — Why don't they like their lessons '? 
' Because things do better if left to work naturally.' — Just go and apply 
this to Greek. ' Because you can't make all boys strong and active.' — 
Whereas you can make all learned and clever ? ' Because some of the 
choicest intellects would be ruined by being forced to play and run.' — 
And are no fine animals ever ruined by being made to conjugate and 
compose ? 

If any one comes and says — ' Well, then, do you propose to organise 
athletics like school, or to disorganise school like athletics ? ' I reply to 
him that it is I who am writing this essay, and not he ; and that I am 
the best judge of what questions it is convenient to answer. But this 
much I will say, that I don't know whether the system of letting boys do 
what lessons they like has ever had a fair trial, and that, with a few 
limitations and laws, I should uncommonly like to see it tried. And, 
whether it is tried or not, I declare upon my honour as a TJ.U. that the 
consideration, which I have been pointing out, seems to me to be serious 
and enormously suggestive. 

Whether to any extent, and to what, the schoolmaster should 
scholasticise athletics, let us now consider. I will treat the question 
without any reference to particular schools, or any particular customs ; 
and I would suggest that, in our subsequent discussion, we shall gain 
more light in proportion as we avoid individual instances and speak of 
common customs. I begin by the proposition that the common English 
school games are of indescribable value. Without any exaggeration, 



330 EDWAED BOWEN 

I declare that in our whole system there is nothing which, in my opinion, 
approaches them in value. I merely mention that the battle of "Waterloo 
was won in the playing fields of Eton, because that remark will have been 
generally expected, and it will now not be necessary to make it again. But 
I have no objection to add to it, that the existence of the playing fields at 
Eton has been much more to the advantage of the world than the winning 
of the battle of Waterloo. There will be none here who will deny that 
games are good, of course ; but there may be some who will not join in 
the strength of my language ; and I will enlarge upon this thesis for a 
few moments. 

In the first place, a good run at football is absolutely a good thing, 
and grand and beautiful, simply because I say it is. It is good in the 
same sense as an eloquent speech. "When it forms part of an organised 
game, and is seen and appreciated by others, the world is ipso facto a 
gainer. The body for ever 1 Sursum crura ! I do not see why this 
argument or assertion should not be true, though I cannot take the 
trouble of putting it in that particular metaphysical form which would 
dazzle and convince. These games are a joy for ever, and that is the 
long and short of it. 

Next, they give a vast quantity of pleasure. 

Next, the social gain is beyond calculation. 

Here one drops perforce into truisms, except that truisms spoken in 
the ordinary tone do not sufficiently express my opinions, and I am driven 
rapidly towards capital letters. I who write have seen and played pro- 
bably more school games than any one now alive ; and my verdict is, 
' Very good.' It would be tiresome to dwell on this ; but consider rapidly 
the habit of being in public, the forbearance, the subordination of the one 
to the many, the exercise of judgment, the sense of personal dignity. 
The day I began to write this essay, a captain of a house football eleven 
asked me to go down to his house-game that day. There was a small 
local trouble : two important boys had a quarrel on, and it was very 
awkward, and, in short, he wanted to be advised. I played ; everything 
went on as usual. After it was over, I asked about the quarrel. It had 
vanished into the delight of exercise and the glory of play. 

Think again of the organising faculty that our games develop. 
Where can you get command and obedience, choice with responsibilitj', 
criticism with discipline, in any degree remotely approaching that in which 
our social games supply them ? 

Think of the morallo-physical side of it ; temper, of course ; dignity 
and courtesy. I asked a new boy this quarter what, on the whole, struck 
him most in school life as being unexpected and remarkable ; he said, the 
politeness with which boys spoke to one another as compared with pre- 
paratory schools. 

Has it never struck us all, when looking on at a game or playing in 
one, that now is the very moment one would choose for getting something 
heroic done ? Does it never occur to us, in the flush and glow of play, 
how little and unimportant things boys' offences are ? — a consideration 



GAMES 331 

which always (and not its opposite) seems to rne to constitute the finest 
atmosphere of moral school life, and which always presents itself to me 
with amazing force when I see a boy sick or hurt. Has it never happened 
to us to find, in a walk home from cricket or football, but especially foot- 
ball, the very best and choicest time for saying the particular thing that 
we want a boy particularly to take to heart ? 

And, once more, I offer it as my deliberate opinion, that the best boys 
are, on the whole, the players of games. I had rather regenerate 
England with the football elevens than with average members of Parlia- 
ment, who are, of course, our wisest men. When I reflect on the vices to 
which games are a permanent corrective— laziness, foppery, man-of-the- 
worldness — I am not surprised at being led to the verdict which I have 
just delivered. And, having known more than one period, at one school 
at any rate, when cricket was distinctly recognised as being on one side, 
and very serious evils on' the other, I find a cricket ball or a football be- 
coming in my eyes a sort of social fetish, of which it is difficult to realise 
the fact that our ancestors never dreamt the value. 

There be three occasions which fairly overcome my sensibilities — yea, 
four — when you might borrow a five-pound note of me. One is, when a 
master has been leading up to the solution of some small intellectual pro- 
blem, and has had the skill to make it interesting and fairly easy, and the 
moment has come when the form has to find it out, when every single 
boy is attending, when brainwork is going on from one end of the class 
to the other, and when every face in the room gets a sudden brightened 
look as the guesses shape themselves to a solution. Another is, when 
something very good in its way has been done or said among an assem- 
blage of companions, and there leaps forth that burst of clapping with the 
hands which in its high key seems to pervade space and almost to speak. 
And, thirdly, when, on the day of the long-expected football match, the 
moment has really come, and that which was to be, is, and the ball is 
really kicked off, and now the play has begun. There is education. There 
is enlargement of horizon : self sinks, the common good is the only good, 
the bodily faculties exhilarate in functional development, and the make- 
believe ambition is glorified into a sort of ideality. Here is boyhood at 
its best, or very nearly at its best. Well, after all, to what was the 
greatest of the Beatitudes allotted — oi K.a6apo\ rrj Kapbia ? Not to un- 
sensualness only, as the commentators think, but, higher still, to simple- 
mindedness. And when you have a lot of human beings, in highest 
social union and perfect organic action, developing the law of their race 
and falling in unconsciously with its best inherited traditions of brother- 
hood and of common action, I think you are not far from getting a glimpse 
of one side of the highest good. There lives more soul in honest play, 
believe me, than in half the hymn-books. 

Quo, Musa, tendis ? Let us get back to controversy. ' I distinct^ 
prefer that my son should not be an athlete,' said a friend of mine, who 
is also a parent, to me the other day. ' I don't want all that excitement 
and display. I want him to have quiet family tastes, to care for beetles 



332 EDWAED BOWEN 

and butterflies, to be sober-minded, reasonable, domestic. Your games 
are a mere excrescence on a properly disciplined life, are a factitious 
pleasure and an artificial employment of energy.' ' Thou fool ! ' I said to him 
(I am not habitually unpolite, but I have been pursuing my theological 
studies a good deal lately), ' is not all school artificial to the last degree ? 
" So much the worse for it, is it ? " " That is just what you complain 
of ? " Why, is not all our life a purely artificial produce from the lives 
of past ancestors, and is not the business of each generation, if Darwinism 
be true, nothing else than to artifise its successors ? Beetle me no 
beetles ! I am not going to give up what I see visibly to be the food of 
health and virtue, because you consider that a Swiss Family Bobinson 
could do very nicely without it. There were not enough for an eleven in 
the days of Adam and Eve, so they had to do without. But, if you find 
people now-a-days trying Locke and Bousseau in practice, and delibe- 
rately preferring them after trial, it will be time enough then to talk of 
domesticity.' 

Well, but there may have been a gram of sense in what my friend said. 
It is possible that the present form of some of our games may tend just a 
shade too much towards self-display. So far as this is the case, I should 
like to point out that it is not the games that are to blame. A person who 
did not happen to be a little behind the scenes of the athletic world would 
hardly believe what an eagerness there is in it to exploiter the schools, to 
get bold of them and make them minister to the distinction and thepurses 
of enterprising gentlemen in London. In schools near London, it needs 
constant watchfulness to parry these attacks, and it is impossible alto- 
gether to defeat them. In such matters as this, authority has a legiti- 
mate function. It may regulate with despotic control the conditions 
under which a game shall turn into a public exhibition, in cricket, rowing, 
football, athletics, shooting, racquets, or even the lawn-tennis of the future. 
Ticket this as Number One. 

Akin to this is the danger of extravagance. Cricket and racquets both 
foster this a little, and they have an excellent counter-agent in football, 
which, in the outer world, tends in the happy direction of cheapness. I 
didn't say — I did not say, vulgarity. In matters of expense, then, the 
master is useful and necessary. This is Number Two. ' Sumptuary 
laws,' said some one to me, in the tone of a Pallas Minerva, last time the 
subject was uppermost here, ' sumptuary laws always are unwise.' I 
found it hard to select the most appropriate answer ; and I think I have 
remarked upon some of my friends that their heart was sounder than their 
head. My friend might as well have said that moral enactments are out 
of place, or that a regulation of locking up at dark had failed when tried 
in the form of curfew. The truth is, that sumptuary laws are fitted for 
children exactly to the same extent as all other laws are — until, that is, 
they can do without them. A master does not do his duty to his games 
who does not enact how much shall be paid to cricket professionals, within 
what limits the tailor and hosier may have their fling, what shall be the 
maximum value of cups given as prizes. 



GAMES 333 

There is one large question of practical organisation which fairly falls 
under the control of masters — that of compulsory games. ' Brethren, in 
the primitive school ' — so will hereafter run the service of the Eeligion of 
Corporeal Humanity — ' there was a laudable custom that all boys were 
obliged to play at games, and, if they didn't, were beaten ; ' and then 
Professor Harrison or Beesly will wink a noble wink as he goes on to 
lament that it can't be revived again. Now, what is our duty by this 
custom ? Evidently it leans for help upon a worthy idea, that boys form 
a community, that every member of the drjixos must play his humble 
part, that incivisme is the worst of vices. This idea is the most pregnant 
and the most formative that schoolboys have. It has immensely wide 
affinities. Atque utinam ex vobis unus is, I suppose, nest to longing for 
Chloe, the most passionate sentiment of our nature. But, though leaning, 
as I said, on this sentiment, the custom rests, I imagine, on an intelligible 
practical foundation ; it began when schools were smaller, and when play 
languished if there were too few players, or if many boys grew up 
unfamiharised to games. That boys should, under these circumstances, 
oblige each other to play seems reasonable and right ; whether it is their 
wisest plan is not to the point. If they think that the general happiness 
gains from individuals joining in football, they have as much right to 
impose it as we should have to oblige Samson to pay police rates, though 
the police were of no value to him. Just up to this point, then, as long 
as the custom is natural, masters should recognise it ; when it goes 
beyond this, when it takes some shape of superstition or priggishness, or 
simply ministers to tyrannical love of power, they should regard it 
jealously, or even interfere against it. Number Three. 

Health, again, is obviously a matter for superior control. You may 
with propriety, if you think it wise, prevent cricket before Lady Day, or 
abolish pole-leaping, or forbid races over a mile long, or modify bathing 
rules, or enforce the wearing of hats or caps. In particular, you may 
with advantage insist on the substitution of civilised football rules for 
barbarous ones. If you are wise, you will interfere as little as possible, 
and as cautiously ; but, when you do, you must enforce your decrees with 
the absolutism of a Peter the Great, and leave no food for grumbling in 
the shape of a hope of reversal. I think I must drop the counting. 

How far, however, may masters go with advantage into the region 
that lies midway between authority and fellowship ? Some headmasters 
almost directly organise games ; some assistant masters teach very 
elaborately the art of good play ; a great many assistant masters join in 
games if nothing else. I fear that nothing but commonplaces modified 
by experience will answer the question. Masters should not teach boys 
to do what they can do for themselves ; and self-organisation we all 
allow to be half the good of the play. But in many cases, boys, and 
chiefly small boys, need to be helped to self- organisation as they are 
helped to construing. Big boys have traditions to guide them, and have 
more sense and versatility ; but even they are often very stupid and 
uninventive, and, if you don't help them, they go on unimproved — small 



334 EDWAKD BOWEN 

boys a fortiori. If, then, wo say that you mustn't be unnecessary, you 
mustn't be officious, you mustn't vulgarise yourself into a professional 
coach, you mustn't seem ostentatiously unintellectual — outside of these 
limitations you will very often do good by giving your help ; and a game 
well directed gives much greater happiness to the players than one of 
which the organisation is suggested by the untrained heads of a single 
generation. Don't do all or nearly all for the boys ; but don't be afraid 
of doing something. 

As to mere joining in the games, do so on two conditions of the utmost 
strictness : (1) That the boys like your doing so ; (2) That you are 
perfectly sure of keeping your temper. Avoid thoughtfully such rocks 
as these : Becoming a partisan on one side with too argumentative eager- 
ness, hurting the boys at football, taking personal lead in cases where 
others can do it, wearying them by an overlong innings for your own 
amusement. Seek social relaxation in it even more than exercise. One 
hears the phrase used at times, So-and-So, a master, is popular because 
he plays at games. That is purely ridiculous. To play is no more 
popular in a man than in a boy. To play genially, modestly, good- 
temperedly, is popular in both ; the more so, perhaps, if the player is 
really worth looking at for his skill, though this is of quite secondan 
value. And I suppose that, if a man is strong-minded, sensible, miselfish, 
brave, sympathising, lively, these virtues will have their course, work 
their influence, reap their fruit, as much in games as in school. Now, 
each of us believes that, as it so happens, these are the particular virtues 
which he himself possesses in perfection. That being the case, I advise 
everybody, subject to the two conditions named above, to play with the 
boys if he can. 

One incidental question : If we play in school games and hear boys 
use words and phrases which — well, which are compatible with faint 
praiso, but not restricted to it, what are we to do '? I myself am one of 
those who think swearing rather a bad vice ; we all know that it is in 
reality hardly a vice at all, and the fact merely is that the Teutonic race 
is, in moments of excitement, prone to the employment of the medial 
mutes ; but it is specially wicked because the criminal knows it is a little 
wicked, and could stop it if he liked. Well, then, in the middle of a game 
we hear some young St. Athanasius making a characteristic remark. 
Shall we go away from the game as if shocked, which is ridiculous 
hypocrisy ; or punish him, which is contrary to the theory on which we 
play— namely, that temporarily and for the purpose of the game we 
partly divest ourselves of our cap and gown ; or shall we pretend not to 
hear it, which is a suggestion of the devil '? I should say, behave exactly 
as vou would wish one of the bigger boys to behave. If it is not a special 
moment of excitement, abuse the boy openly, a little angrily, without 
any shyness; if you are shy and undcrspoken on the ground of being a 
guest, things will seem unpleasant. If the offence was almost excusable, 
even still abuse him, but don't exaggerate ; you are not a prig or a Puritan. 
If the moment isn't adapted for moral exhortation, put it off till it is, and 



GAMES 335 

then take him to task, and, if he is a big boy, take him to a good deal 
of task. 

How very little organisation by authority after all ! How very free 
it is ! How largely nature and instinct, limited only by a few big rales, 
is left to itself for the purpose of training the body ! Can you imagine 
now, gentlemen, an arrangement by which this shall be otherwise; in 
virtue of which these muscles shall be trained on one day and those on 
another, in this manner the back shall be straightened, in that the sinews 
shall be developed, in a third the lungs shall have their work cut out for 
them ? Can you conceive that the master shall lay down and enforce the 
degrees and the order in which physical energy shall stiffen into rule, and 
pretend to be physical enjoyment ? I can ; it is in the gymnasium. There 
it is ; it exists. It is recommended by no scientific authorities of repute > 
it appeals to no traditions of past enjoyment ; it awakens no social 
interests, and trains no administrative faculties. It is the mere Greek 
Iambics of physical training ; has its element of truth, as all pedantry 
has, and has in its physical results a certain poor degree, as all pedantry 
has, of success. But what a substitute for football, and what a reflection 
for us, that men who know and have tasted the powers and the pleasures 
of play should yet in cold blood drive the children into this dead and 
barren routine ! Don't suppose that great traditions can be trampled on 
with impunity. How do we know that the* school games are so im- 
movably fixed in school life that the meddlesome intrusion of formal 
gymnastics may not in some degree blight and spoil them ? 

pauvres chers enfants, qu'ont nounis de leur lait 

Et qu'ont berets nos femmes ; 
Ces blomoB oiseleurs ont pris dans leurs filets 

Toutes vob douces ames. 

Si nous les laissons faire, on aura dans vingt ans, 

Sous les cieux que L>ieu dore, 
Unc France aux yeux ronds, aux regards clignotants, 

Qui halra l'aurore! 

We must not exaggerate : it will take a good deal of authoritative gym- 
nastics to spoil cricket ; but I do feel, towards anything which goes in 
its influence against the games of. which we are so proud, a jealousy and 
an aversion which almost make me blind to its merits. 

[The short remainder of the essay is suppressed as being frivolous.] 1 
1 ThiB note is attached to the essay as originally printed. 



33G EDWARD BOWEN 



VII 



THE COMMUNE OF PAEIS, 1871 » 

I am about to skoteh the story of a scries of events which took place in 
1871, anil occupied two months : events which in their dramatic interest, 
their novelty, the marvellous paradox of the situation, have probably 
never been equalled. The period of the Commune of Paris presents a 
picture military, social, and political, quite unparalleled in history. 

The outline of the story is, that when peace was concluded between the 
Germans and French, and while the invading armies actually half 
encircled Paris, there arose a civil war between its inhabitants and the 
Central Government of M. Thiers ; and after a siege of two months the 
Versailles army — as that of the Government was called — succeeded in 
taking the city, not without frightful carnage and massacre. By the 
word ' Commune ' is meant the municipal council Avhich governed Paris 
during this period. 

The great Franco-German wax- was begun in August 1870, the 
Emperor Napoleon III. having seized an occasion of quarrel against 
Prussia. The radical deputies of Paris had opposed the war, and M. Thiers 
had voted against it. But the political necessities of the Empire wero 
paramount, and war was declared. Its early calamities soon destroyed 
what popularity and internal strength the Imperial Government had, and 
upon the capitulation at Sedan, in which MacMahon's army, and the 
Emperor with it, surrendered to the enemy, a bloodless insurrection in 
Paris proclaimed the downfall of the Empire; and the republican ' Govern- 
ment of the 4th of September,' as it was called, came into existence. It Mas 
composed of the deputies of the capital ; it had no formal sanction from 
the French people, but it was tacitly accepted as a government which 
could and would fight the Prussians. 

The German armies soon surrounded Paris, and the famous siege 
be^an. Gambctta escaped in a balloon; some of the ministers joined 
him at Tours, where he organised fresh levies ; others remained in Paris. 
The siege went on ; suffering began, and the sorties were unsuccessful ; 
no army of succour appeared. The democracy of the city began to cry 
out that they were being betrayed. The only regular force, they said, 
that the city walls contained, was under the command of Imperialist 
officers; there was no heart in it, no popular sympathy or popular 
strength; the city militia was ill organised, and generals like Duorot and 
Vinoy, and a commander of Paris like Trochu, seemed little to trust 
it. Away, it was said, with such half-hearted relics of the past, and 

1 A lecture delivered at the Harrow Liberal Club on October 31, 1887. 



THE COMMUNE OF PARIS 337 

let the people show their strength I The bourgeois citizens, the shop 
keepers, and capitalists bad bad their 'lay; was not the turn of the 
workmen come? 80 theory ran; socialist doctrines of all shapes were 

preached^ even amid the 'Jin of arms; the rights of labour were discussed 
aH loudly as the operationi of warfare; and one 'lay at the end of October 

some battalion* of the National Guard invaded the Hotel de Ville. from 

whicli the ministers escaped by the window. But the movement was 
premature, arid broke down ; and the siege went on. 

But SO) too., 'lid the irritation of the multitude. Just before the 
capitulation the National Guard insisted that where the regulars had 
failed, they v/oul'J succeed if tried. They had their chance accordingly; 
they poured forth to the last sortie, to meet, a terrible slaughter and 
defeat, and they came back saying that they had been betrayed once 

more. There was no love loet between the Government and theirgenerals 

On the one hand, and the workmen, with their committee;; and clubs, on 
the other. 

Now, Buppo;;e p' ace made early in 1871; Paris, which ha* endured 
real hardship, and bat borne it bravely, is provisioned again. But how 
are rents to be paid ? How is work to be found for immediate needs ? 
How are men to live V 

I'eace is made; but who had made it ? The answer to this question 
is important. That France was beaten had been clear enough ; that she 
must submit and agree to terms had been equally clear. But, as Bismarck 
put it to himself, who is France? Usually a government acts in the 
name Of a nation, and the nation is bound by the promises which it makes 
in its behalf. But the difficulty was that there was no formally accepted 
government. That of September 4 was a merely extemporised piece of 
machinery, and something else was necessary, unless Bismarck was pre- 
pared to run the risk of making agreements, and finding them repudiated 
by some fresh authority after six months. I will make peace, lie said, if 
you summon a regular assembly, duly elected, which in the name of the 
nation shall form a regular government to arrange terms with their 
conquerors. This, then, was done — done, it need hardly be said, in great 
haste : deputies were sent from all parts of France, men who could be 
depended upon to secure that peace v/hich was now necessary for the 
country. The leading gentlemen of each district were in general chosen, 
and it was commonly believed to be the most aristocratic parliament that 
had ever sat in France. It met at Bordeaux, and elected JVJ. Thiers chief 
of the new Government ; a ministry was composed under his auspices, and 
the treaty with Bismarck was signed. 

The assembly at once dissolved itself, to make way for a more formally 
and deliberately chosen Parliament. That is the way you might perhaps 
expect me to proceed, and the course would not have been unreasonable. 
But that is not what did happen. This same assembly considered that it 
sufficiently represented France; it continued its sittings, removed to 
Versailles, and obtained an assurance from M. Thiers that be considered 
it free, provided that for the moment it kept to questions outside of 

z 



338 EDWARD BOWEN 

constitutional politics, to adopt hereafter either a monarchical or a re- 
publican form of government as it should think best for the country. 

The position, then, is this. You have on the one hand a Parliament 
which was chosen expressly to make peace, and which goes on to make 
laws and governments, intending hereafter to frame- constitutions, and, if 
it likes, to bring back kings. It has few popular sympathies ; it is terribly 
afraid of Paris ; and, by refusing to hold its sittings there, it offers a 
mortal affront to the one city which had suffered so much for France. On 
the other hand, you have the population of the capital, angry, suspicious, 
proud of what they had gone through, intensely determined upon the 
maintenance of a republic ; and the mass of them not knowing where — 
until commerce and labour are organised again — they are to earn their 
bread. For the moment, as long as they are serving in the National 
Guard, they receive a trifling pay, and that is something. 

I have spoken of the mass of the population as workmen. The mass 
of every town population consists of workmen ; but Paris was composed 
of them at the time to an exceptional degree. Partly, the rich and the 
idle people had fled beforehand from the prospect of the siege. Partly, 
I am bound to confess, a good many more Mod now, because they began 
to be afraid that fresh troubles were coming. 

As for the workmen, they were enrolled in the National Guard, and 
elaborately organised, with a representative committee formed of delegates 
acting in the name of each battalion. Gambetta was not among them ; 
nor indeed was he, however much they admired him, a man of their class. 
Rochefort was there, half liked, half distrusted ; not now swaying thou- 
sands, as he did twelve months before, with a word. They had no longer 
Blanqui, the idolised champion, the martyr, as they termed him, of 
popular rights ; the Government had got him in prison. But they had 
Milliere, the lawyer ; Flourens, the gay clever student ; Assi, the leader of 
strikes; Raspail, Varlin, typical working men; Cournet, Vermorcl, F(51ix 
Pyat, journalists of various types ; Delescluze, the venerated hero of 
old-fashioned radicalism ; and Lullier, the drunken humbug. They hardly 
could judge between them, hardly sort worth from imposture. But do 
not judge too hastily men whose liberties have grown up among every 
form of repression, and for whom to be an enemy of existing authority 
becomes at once a badge of merit. 

But what did they want '? Perhaps they hardly knew. They differed 
as much as other people differ — as much as English workmen differ 
among themselves, and more. Many simply desired that Paris, self- 
governed, and freed from the perpetual yoke of a central authority which 
controlled it alike in small things and in great, should be an independent 
head of the French Commonwealth. A large number wished to see a 
state of things in which labour, organised and politically effective, should 
make its own terms with society, and oblige the middle class to submit 
to its conditions. Not a few were members or supporters of the ' Inter- 
nationale,' the international society of working men, an organisation 
which held its annual congresses and issued its programmes to the 



THE COMMUNE OF PAH IS 339 

workers in all countries; dreaded, naturally, by those who had capital, 
and beliered to have more power than it actually had. And every form 
of socialism, from the temperate and philosophic to the violent and 
communistic, had its representatives among the population of Paris. 

As for the party of the Assembly, the party of Versailles, their views 
were more simple. They hated radicalism, and they feared Paris. The 
question of the constitution with which they should endow the country 
was by consent adjourned. Meanwhile the majority of the Assembly 
hankered after the good old days when kings reigned in France, and 
many of them were engaged day after day in effort:-! to bring about, later 

on, a restoration of monarchy. This, you will remember, svas tie oni 

tfiing which Paris, almost to a man, was against; and it should be added 
that M. Thiers, though he never expressed himself plainly, laid it down 
that, for a time at any rate, republican institutions must be considered to 
exist, and was no doubt rapidly coming to the conclusion that they must 
continue to do so. 

Now to return to the story. It was pretty certain that a conflict was 
coming. It began also to he certain that the troops of the line who had 
been left in Paris sympathised with the populace. Proclamations began 
to appear on the walls from the Committee of the National Guard on the 
one side, and from General Vino.y on the other. The critical moment 
came, when — according to a condition of peace which, however humi- 
liating, it was decided for certain reasons to accept — a detachment of the 
Prussian army was to enter Paris in triumph. This took place, and for 
two days they occupied a certain strictly limited portion of the city. 
During this period a line of French soldiers fringed with an impassable 
cordon the barriers which had been happily raised round the district. 
Meanwhile, through the city shops were shut, carriages disappeared, not 
a newspaper was printed, and in the night some one covered with a black 
veil the statues in the Place de la Concorde. The time was one of 
terrible suspense, but no collision happened. The German troops were 
withdrawn, and they shortly removed altogether from the western side of 
the city, retaining still the eastern forts in their possession. 

Now in the district thus temporarily occupied were a large number 
of cannon which had contributed in the siege to the defence of the city, 
and which clearly could not remain where they were. To whom did 
they belong ? Settle that, and you settle the whole case between Versailles 
and Paris. ' To us,' said the National Guard ; ' they were bought by our 
contributions ' (it happened that this was to some extent true), ' and they 
have never been made over to anyone else.' ' To the Government,' 
said M. Thiers ; ' guns cannot belong to soldiers ; they are national 
property, and we represent the nation.' I defy anyone to pronounce 
which of these claims was the more just. That is what comes of revolu- 
tions ; questions of national rights, public property, the authority of 
government, get entangled and insoluble. You must remember that the 
authority which the Government of M. Thiers claimed to have was one 
conferred solely by the Assembly late of Bordeaux, now of Versailles. 

z 2 



340 EDWAED BOWEN 

It was argued with some plausibility that the Assembly had no mandate 
from the country to make governments ; it had been hastily summoned — 
summoned, indeed, one might almost say, by Count Bismarck — to make 
peace and nothing more. Anyhow, the Parisian Central Committee 
judged sagaciously that the party in a dispute which has guns and 
ammunition has some strong practical arguments on its side, and it 
carried the cannon off to the top of the hill of Montmartre, where they 
remained in the custody of battalions of the National Guard. And, as 
their hand was in, they thought they might as well annex what other 
g\ms and ammunition they could meet with in other parts of Paris, and 
these were secured in like manner. 

M. Thiers, and General Vinoy under him, quite understood what was 
going on. But what could they do '? Even the soldiers of the line were 
not to be trusted to obey their orders. M. Thiers determined to appoint 
a new chief commandant of the National Guard, who might perhaps be 
listened to. He unfortunately selected an old and unpopular general for 
the post, and the National Guard replied by electing a commander of 
their own. The old general published an order of the day declaring his 
authority, but no one paid it any attention. The Minister suppressed 
six radical journals by a decree. He could not have taken a more unwise 
step; Paris knew too well what the suppression of journals meant, and 
what came of it. 

March 18 saw the first appeal to force. Before daybreak that morning 
a detachment of the line, under orders from the Government, occupied 
Montmartre, seized the guns, and began to carry them off. The surprise 
was complete, and the Government was in possession. But their triumph 
was brief. The Paris battalions— the ' Federals,' as they called them- 
selves — were speedily called to arms, and swarmed round the hill. There 
were nearly '200 cannon, all massed and entangled together ; and there 
were not enough horses. Still, some of the guns were carried halfway 
down the hill. But by this time it was daylight ; women and children 
crowded round the soldiers and appealed to them ; company after com- 
pany gave way and joined the insurgents. General Lecomte, who was 
in command, was carried off from among his own men : and by midday 
the hill, guns and all, was once more in Federal possession. 

A bloodless victory ? Alas, no ! Now comes a sad story. The first 
hours of the morning had been fairly good-tempered ; but passion woke 
as the day advanced. There were those present who bore a bitter hatred 
to General Lecomte, some of his own soldiers among the fiercest. He 
was carried off to a private house where some Federal officers were in 
council ; a few of his staff were taken along with him, and shortly another 
general named Thomas, who had been found near the spot, was brought 
there also. Crowds surrounded the house, clamouring for vengeance on 
officers who had, as it was believed, told their men to fire on the people. 
The Federal officers within had no wish to be murderers. They tried to 
send Lecomte off under an escort to a prison, but he was stopped and 
brought back. They tried to gam time by pretending to set on foot a 



THE COMMUNE OF PARIS 341 

Bort of court -martial ; for two hours they kept off the crowd, who had 
begun to threaten them too. At last the doors were forced. A mob, 
chiefly of soldiers of Lecomte's own regiment, burst in, hurried off the 
two generals to the garden of the house, and shot them down as they 
walked. The officers of their suite were allowed to escape. 

It was a cruel and wicked deed, and it shed a lurid light on the events 
of the two months that followed. But I will ask you to take particular 
note of this fact. You will often hear it said that the Commune — that is, 
the city-government of Paris — were guilty of this crime. Now the 
Commune was not yet in existence. Nor was the Central Committee 
guilty of it ; nor, indeed, was the National Guard at all. The generals 
were murdered by a tumultuous mob consisting chiefly of their own 
soldiers. The guilt of the Commune and of the National Guard alike 
was this — and it is grave enough — that they never took steps to punish 
those who had comroitted the murder. 

That day and the next Federal troops took possession of all the 
important positions in the city. The Government officials were with- 
drawn one after another to Versailles ; such of the regular troops as had 
not fraternised with the insurgents were brought off; the Central Com- 
mittee installed itself in the Hotel de Yille, and the red flag floated on 
its roof. Civil war may be said to have declared itself. 

Do not suppose that Paris was as one man. The National Guard with 
its Central Committee had both power and, on the whole, popularity ; 
but it had no regular and established authority. The city had its proper 
municipal officers, the ' mayors ' of the several districts, responsible in 
ordinary times to the Government ; and most of thern, though sympa- 
thising with the cause of Paris, still protested against the military usurpa- 
tion of power. Protest they might ; but the bureaux of all the districts 
in turn were occupied by order of the Committee and their ridiculous and 
incapable chief Lullier. The mayors, however, and those who thought 
with them, had no easy task. They had no fancy to throw themselves 
into the arms of what they deemed to be the monarchical assembly at 
Versailles, bent as it was, now more than ever, on restricting the liberties 
of the city. On the other hand, they believed in law and order ; and 
the National Guard, however much they judged it to have right on its 
side, was now acting against both. It is fair to say that the Central 
Committee professed no intention of usurping a permanent authority. 
Their first desire was to secure the election of a regular municipal 
council ; and to this end orders were at once given that elections should 
be held in all the districts. The Assembly, it is true, refused its sanction, 
and the mayors declined for a time to co-operate, but they finally yielded, 
and the elections were held. The Municipal Council of Paris, or in 
French phrase the Commune, was the result. It represented Paris just 
as much as the Town Council of Birmingham represents Birmingham. 
The word has nothing to do with what is called ' Communism,' and it 
implies no political doctrines ; it is a word many centuries old — older 
than the word ' House of Commons,' and similar in meaning to our 



342 EDWAED BOWBN 

English ' Commonwealth.' To this body, properly elected, the Central 
Committee formally resigned what civil authority they had assumed. 
They continued, however, their own organisation and their military 
control, and later on they exercised a disturbing and mischievous influ- 
ence on the fortunes of the city. 

The Commune consisted of about eighty members, some of whom, 
Conservatives and Moderates, at once resigned. It comprised several 
veterans in the cause of liberty, not to say of revolution. Beslay, the 
president, honest and respected; Delescluze, eager and earnest in spite of 
years of imprisonment and exile, a man of more actual influence than 
any ; Valles, a conspicuous member of the ' Internationale ; ' Vermorel, 
Cournet, Eanvier. There were a good many journalists, lawyers, literary 
men, some good and honest, some noisy and self- asserting. Felix Pyat 
was a type of the latter kind. When he escaped afterwards, I asked a 
colleague of his about him. 'Yes, Pyat has got off,' he said with a smile, 
' he has spent his life in getting off.' A third of the number were 
artisans, well selected on the whole by their class, and comprising some 
of the best of the Commune — Varlin, Theisz, Malon. And, finally, there 
were many who had secured a seat by mere clamour and fluency of 
tongue, and who hindered more than they helped. 

The Commune had to frame an administration, arrange finance, 
organise an army, and defend a besieged town. They had over 200,000 
soldiers at their bidding, while Versailles had at starting some 40,000, but 
these latter were augmented every day by fresh arrivals from the pro- 
vinces, and prisoners of war now released from Prussian prisons. The 
Commune named secretaries and committees for the various departments 
of work, and a general executive commission of nine members. The 
Prussians had by this time evacuated all the forts south of the city, and 
retired to the right bank of the Seme, leaving the left bank in French 
hands. Thiers withdrew the garrisons from the five forts south of Paris, 
as it was necessary to concentrate the few troops that he had, and even 
the magnificent fort of Mont Valerien, which towers over Paris from the 
west side, was left either almost or altogether without troops. The 
Federals immediately took possession of all the southern forts, including 
those of Issy and Vanves. A few hours more and they would have 
occupied Mont Valerien, but wiser counsels had reigned at Versailles, and 
a regiment was sent just in time to garrison it before the Federal troops 
could arrive, which Lullier, half drunk, had for a whole day neglected to 
send. Those few hours decided the result of the siege. 

For the next two months, then, consider that the Versailles army — 
the ' rurals ' as their enemies called them — occupy all the west fringe 
beyond reach of the city guns from Asnieres round by St. Cloud to the 
southern hills, joining both on north and south the Prussian lines, from 
which they are separated only by the river. The Prussians look on 
grimly, taking no part, and waiting till the end. Was ever such a scene 
witnessed in history ? The conquering legions, secure and impassible, 
sit viewing, as from an umpire's seat, a bitter civil war between the 



THE COMMUNE OF PAEIS 343 

opposing fractions of the nation which they have just subdued. They 
are absolutely unmolested, and, except quite at the end, observe a strict 
neutrality. 

Hostilities actually commenced in the first days of April. An affair 
of outposts took place, to the advantage of the Versaillais ; and the next 
day, in obedience not indeed to an order of the Commune, but to a popular 
cry for action, three large columns of Federals started by various routes 
against Versailles. They hardly expected any resistance ; they organised 
neither commissariat nor ambulance. The northern columns were met 
by a tremendous fire from Mont Valerien, and turned at once to flight. 
One of the chief in command, Gustave Flourens, a popular and brilliant 
man of letters, was wounded and taken prisoner. He was kept some 
time in a house close by, then brought out and cut down with sabres, 
under orders of, if not actually by the hand of, a Versailles officer. So at 
least the story went, and it was told to me not long after by a person 
whom both sides respected ; but he said he had no certain proof of the 
details. The other column started on the south side and made its way 
nearly to Versailles, but it was met by some of Vinoy's best troops, and 
after hard fighting was repulsed. Duval, its commander, was taken. He 
was being led along to Versailles when Vinoy himself came riding by. 
He stopped and asked who it was, and when he was told, ' Let him be 
shot,' he said. Duval walked towards the wall that was pointed out, 
leaped over the ditch, placed himself upright, said, ' Vive la Commune ! ' 
and fell dead. He was just thirty : he had been a workman, and for six 
months an officer in the National Guard. He knew little about com- 
manding armies, but he knew how to die. 

People talk of the atrocities of the Commune. I wish to point out to 
you that here, at the very commencement of the struggle, we have a 
prisoner killed in cold blood by the enemy to whom he had surrendered ; 
and the person who orders the murder is not a drunken soldier, not an 
excited private enemy, but the commander-in-chief of the army of 
Versailles. 

"When the news of these disasters reached Paris, people began to 
reflect that an ill-organised tumultuous sortie is not the way to conquer 
disciplined troops, however inferior in number. Delescluze, for one, was 
furious. Who is to command, he said, we, or the caprice of the army ? 
One wise step was taken at once. A real soldier, Cluseret, was put at 
the head of the War Office ; he had served under Garibaldi and in the 
American Civil War, and under his direction the Federal troops quickly 
gained in stability and discipline. They never were wanting in corn-age ; 
and now, with positions skilfully fortified, and duties adequately arranged, 
their military value was doubled. No fresh sorties were made, but the 
batteries engaged one another day after day, and irregular fighting went 
on almost without intermission at Asnieres, Neuilly, and the scattered 
villages that lay between the two armies. 

But it was, above all, important to stop the massacre of prisoners of 
war. It would have been easy to make reprisals, but such a method of 



344 EDWARD BO WEN 

warfare suited the taste of the great French generals better than that 
of the Commune. This is what they did. They passed a decree that a 
certain number of persons selected from among those men of Paris who 
were known to be friends of the Versailles Government should be taken 
and kept as hostages. They selected important people — the Archbishop 
of Paris, the Chief Justice, and others of less rank — and they declared that 
as often as a Federal soldier was killed in cold blood, vengeance should 
be taken on some of these hostages. Was this measure justifiable ? I 
have often heard it discussed, and it is not a question easy to settle. The 
hostages were quiet citizens, who took no part in warfare on either side. 
But, the Commune argued, ' We do not want to hurt them. It is no 
worse a crime to kill an archbishop than to kill a soldier after the battle ; 
we say that we can prevent the latter by threatening the former.' I am 
bound to say that on the whole I think a strong case was made out 
for the measure. The Commune did not, as a fact, put these men to 
death (you will afterwards see what I mean) ; they perhaps never in- 
tended to do so in any case, and what is most important to notice is 
this — the decree gained its end. The murder of prisoners on the part of 
the Versailles army ceased completely for the next six weeks, and till near 
the end of the struggle the war was conducted according to the ordinary 
custom of belligerents. 

As for Cluseret, he insisted on the enrolment of all citizens, hunted 
up defaulters, rigorously closed the gates on the Prussian side of the city 
as well as the other, tried ineffectually to prevent his officers from 
wearing gold lace and plumes at their own sweet pleasure, and even held 
his own for a time against the Central Committee, which still claimed the 
control of the army, and were little pleased at having a master in the 
Bureau of War. He did not venture, except in special cases, to interfere 
with the fatal right which they maintained of appointing their own 
officers. The best of his subordinates were Dombrowski, a Pole by birth ; 
La Cecilia, an Italian ; and Bossel, a young officer of artillery, who had 
joined the cause of Paris from ardent republican conviction. 

Meanwhile, what confusion, what rashness, what selfish vanity, what 
capricious and bewildering changes of policy in the Commune itself 1 Its 
debates remind one of a dictionary of general knowledge with the pages 
sorted wrongly ; of the House of Co mm ons on a real Irish night ; of a 
game of football when the players have not yet agreed upon the rules. 
Some things were excellently done. Theisz got the postal service in 
order, within forty-eight hours. Jourde managed finance not without 
skill. Bigault, a profligate and hot-headed leader, was made Minister ot 
Police, but mismanaged it so that it was handed over to Cournet, who 
was honest and capable. He had his difficulties, no doubt. He was 
surrounded with spies. ' You yourself had spies at Versailles,' I said to 
him once. ' Yes,' he said, ' and the men whom I paid to do the work 
were at the same time in the pay of the other side. I knew it all the 
while, but we got more out of it than they did.' Active though the 
Comniune no doubt was, it utterly failed in the power of enforcing 



THE COMMUNE OF PAEIS 345 

obedience to its decrees ; and in political experience — by which I mean the 
habit of handling political subjects, the capacity for seeing what things 
are important at each moment, of adjusting one line of conduct with 
another, of taking general views instead of mixing up details — they were 
hopelessly and fatally wanting. One thing I am convinced that they did, 
with all their failure — they saved the French Republic. While the contest 
lasted, no one at Versailles breathed a word about a restoration of kings ; 
and when it was over, M. Thiers, who saw that the country on the whole 
was for a republic, was in complete command of the situation. Whether 
the Commune was in the right or the wrong, of which I leave you to 
judge, at any rate I believe that but for it France would have been a 
monarchy in the spring of 1871. 

About the middle of April, I applied at the Charing Cross booking 
office for a ticket for Paris. The face of the clerk was as though I had 
asked for a ticket for the inside of Colney Hatch. ' Well,' he said at last, 

' I suppose I can give you a ticket, but ' The pause implied that the 

company did not issue tickets of life insurance as well. I went a step 
further, and begged for a return ticket. There he absolutely drew the 
line ; the idea was preposterous, and I had to abandon it. I was accom- 
panied by one friend ; we crossed to Calais, where the Prussians were in 
full possession, found a train to Amiens, and another to Paris. But it 
had very few passengers, and those few gradually diminished. As we 
approached the city through the Prussian lines, every other person in the 
train, except the guard, dismounted, and I and my friend entered Paris 
alone. 

I am sure that you will now expect me to tell you of wild scenes of 
disorder, of tumult and outrage, of strange escapes and romantic disguises, 
and the usual stories of a revolutionary time. If so, you will be 
disappointed. To say the truth, I am not sure that we were not dis- 
appointed too. Paris was absolutely tranquil — if at least a city can be 
called so whose ramparts are being bombarded every day. We went to 
a small quiet hotel ; I need hardly say that there were no other guests. 
The streets were strangely quiet ; no carriages ; very few carts ; about a 
third of the shops were shut. Everywhere the red flag was flying. We 
went where we liked and saw what we pleased. There was no famine ; not 
much meat to be had, but plenty of vegetables. There were barricades at all 
the important corners of streets ; while they were in making, every passer- 
by was required to add one stone as he went through — that is the rule 
in revolutions ; but fortunately for us they were mostly finished when we 
got there ; and splendid bits of architecture some of them were, solid, tall, 
and mounted with cannon. Sentries everywhere were as civil as possible, 
and they seemed to pride themselves on showing what an army of the 
people could be. ' Move on, please, citizen,' was the utmost remonstrance 
we incurred, even at the dangerous points near the batteries. We mixed 
sometimes in crowds, and never once were robbed or insulted. One 
phrase comes to my mind, which I heard from a ragged-looking unwashed 
fellow in the middle of a mob one day. ' Yes,' he said, ' the rich people 



346 EDWAED BOWEN 

have no tyranny over vis now ; they only exist on sufferance ' — on suffer '- 
ance— he rolled the r in a way which sounded quite terrible. But he 
never tried to take rny watch. "What he said was true ; the rich did exist, 
and exist on sufferance, just as much as they do at this day in London 
or any other civilised community which knows that it is for the common 
advantage that property honestly gained should be securely held. ' "What 
about crime ? ' I said to one of the mayors whom I mentioned before, 
an ex-member of the Commune who knew Paris intimately. ' We have 
none,' he said. ' No crime '? ' I asked ; ' do not people rob and murder each 
other ? ' ' No,' he answered, ' we have no magistrates, no police ; and 
that in a city which under the Empire took 10,000 gendarmes to keep it 
in order.' I am sure that what he said was in the main true ; the excite- 
ment of the time, and the fact that occupation, with a low pay, was 
found for every one in the ranks of the Federal army, really prevented 
mischief for these few weeks ; and no doubt if plunder had occurred on a 
large scale, a detachment of troops would have stopped it. ' And,' my 
friend added, ' the school children go to school eA r exw day.' 

One of our favourite walks was to the south-west corner of Paris, just 
where tbe Seine leaves the city. It was a very vulnerable part, though 
fairly safe as yet; and we used to watch the duel that went on between 
the forts of Issy and Vanves which guarded it, and the Versailles batteries 
on the hills beyond. Another walk was to the top of Montmartre, from 
which one gets a splendid view of all the west country ; there was always 
a crowd of idlers here, to whom we could listen as they discussed the 
situation, sometimes with jokes, sometimes with passion. Here it was 
that, as a friend (an enemy of the Commune) told me, a lady one day was 
standing close by a woman who seemed distressed at the sight before her. 
' The rascals ! ' she finally said. ' Yes,' said the lady, ' I wish the 
Versaillais would come and kill them all.' It was an unfortunate remark, 
as the woman's exclamation was directed not against the Federals, but 
against the enemy. There were angry looks at the lady ; the bystanders 
abused her, and — she went away ! The incident was told me as a proof 
of the ferocity of the populace. I thought it myself a specimen of very 
remarkable mildness. The great delight here was always to look at the 
wagon blinds, the ironclad engine down at Asnieres in front of us. 
There was a long iron screen which hid its movements from the enemy. 
Behind this it would get up steam, load the gun that it carried, and then 
creep to one end or other of the screen, deliver its shot, and be out of 
sight again before Valerien or some other battery could reply. All over 
the country puffs of smoke were going up from either a battery or the 
explosion of a sheU on one side or the other ; occasionally a house would 
be set on fire ; sometimes, but not often, we could distinguish the harsh 
metallic sound of a mitrailleuse. It was at Neuilly that the hardest 
fighting went on ; here it never stopped in fact. I went to see one of the 
hospitals, which was admirably managed : a Federal captain was dying 
of his wounds at one end ; at another a lady was teaching a convalescent 
soldier his alphabet — he had got as far as E. The surgeon told me the 



THE COMMUNE OF PAEIS 347 

fighting had been very severe — a great many bayonet wounds, especially 
at first. 

One morning we were awakened by a tremendous noise of firing, and 
thought the enemy was in the city. We rushed to the window, and 
saw the solitary hotel servant below. ' What's the matter ? ' we cried 
together. ' Eien, monsieur— on se bat,' was the reply, which I have often 
thought of as significant. However, we dressed and dashed off towards 
the noise. It was not inside the city, but at one of the gates, against 
which a violent cannonade was being directed, and it was replying as 
well as it could. We got as near as we thought it safe to go. An ugly 
black fragment came flying across the street and struck a house corner ; 
I carried it home as a souvenir and have it here. 

We succeeded, not without some trouble, in getting passes to enable 
us to leave Paris at pleasure, and very convenient they were. We might 
indeed have got out among the Prussians and come round to Versailles ; 
there was nothing to prevent our seeing M. Thiers or Marshal MacMahon 
(who now, by the way, had returned from his captivity along with many 
thousand soldiers of the line, and was in chief command), and bringing 
them plans and pictures of the defences. Was a war ever known before 
in which there was almost free communication between one headquarters 
and the other ? Indeed, we were rather tempted to spend a day or two 
among the other side ; but we were afraid of getting into some trouble, 
and gave up the idea. But one or two days we got outside the city, and 
went down to the river towards the blown-up bridge at Asnieres, where 
the soldiers were lazily firing at one another across the river. They did 
not hurt each other much. ' Don't stand just there,' said one, ' that is a 
bad corner ; two men have been shot there this morning.' We got up 
into a half-finished house close by and had a look at things, making 
friends with the men by dividing our lunch with them. One man wished 
it was over ; he ' didn't like it ; shooting anybody was bad enough — though 
Prussians after all mattered little — but shooting Frenchmen, that was 
different.' On the way home I passed a solitary sentry, an ordinary 
specimen of what the English newspapers called the bloodthirsty ruffians 
of the Commune, and offered him the remaining half of a chicken sausage 
that I had brought from London. He refused to take it, as it was the 
last I had. 

Then another day we strolled out among the Prussians, and saw their 
army, and the awful havoc that had been made in the great sortie of 
December, village after village in ruins. We got on a hill, and sat in the 
sun and ate our lunch ; a burnt village was at our feet ; the Prussian 
soldiers near us ; the birds were singing gaily over our heads in the trees ; 
and far away on the other side of Paris, Valerien was thundering against 
the city walls. 

The attacking forces were no doubt courageous and well commanded. 
Half of them were returned prisoners of war, and half were drafts collected 
from the rest of France. Everything was done to animate them for 
work. ' What! was one city to set itself up against the nation ? Just when 



34S EDWAED BOWEN 

the terrible war was over and peace made, was the country to be plunged 
in fresh conflict just becaiise a handful of selfish adventurers set up some 
fancied municipal rights and asserted a ridiculous claim to govern them- 
selves in defiance of the national sovereignty '? It was time,' they cried, 
4 that once for all Paris should be taught who was master.' 

But it would be endless to describe the profound interest and the 
amazing contrasts of this strange phase of polities and of war alike. One 
thing was clear enough to us, that Paris would be beaten. From the 
time when the Commune had made up their minds that they must act on 
the defensive alone, and it had become certain that the other towns 
would not, or could not, come to their aid, the besiegers were bound to 
win. It is true that at Lyons, Marseilles, and elsewhere in the South, 
attempts had been made to establish a similar Commune and to cope 
with the power of the Central Government ; but one after another these 
efforts had been suppressed ; and it was clear that the mass of the nation 
were on the side, not indeed of the x\ssembly as such, but of the Govern- 
ment of M. Thiers. And slowly the military strength of Versailles 
increased, and that of Paris diminished. Even the political force of the 
Commune seemed to grow weaker. Public order, however, still reigned ; 
there was little or no violence. The first thing done by the people of 
Paris when they felt themselves free was to burn the guillotine. "When 
I hear of the atrocities of the Commune, I always ask the person who 
speaks if he can mention to me an instance of a single life which was 
taken by order of the Commune, or during its reign of seven weeks. My 
belief is that as long as that reign lasted, and till it was broken up by the 
entry of the troops, there was not one. A court-martial would sometimes 
pronounce a sentence of death, but it was never carried out. Private 
property, with the exception of three or four houses, was respected. The 
Bank of France had eight millions sterling ha its vaults. The Governor 
said v to the Commune, • Plunder this and you ruin France. But you say 
you want funds. Well, draw upon me for what money you want, sign a 
receipt, and you shall have it.' Beslay, the President of the Commune, a 
man of the strictest integrity, was appointed to arrange matters with the 
Bank, and from time to time sums were paid out across the counter. As 
much more was raised by taxation ; and though money was squandered, 
of pillage and robbery there was none. 

It may be asked, How far did the Commune attempt to carry out the 
programme of organisation of labour, of the exaltation of the artisan 
class, the socialist or semi-socialist ideas with which so many of its 
members had started '? It was not only a movement for republican and 
free institutions, it was also at bottom a protest against the social system 
which it found existing under the Empire. What came of that side of 
it ? Very little. Empty workshops were to be reopened with associations 
of artisans, but there was no time to organise them. Bakers were for- 
bidden to work at night, on the ground that fresh bread is less important 
than the baker's health ; but people wanted their bread fresh, and the 
order was never obeyed. Of course the Commune was anti-clerical ; 



THE COMMUNE OF PARIS 349 

many churches were used as club-rooms, but there was no prohibition of 
the Mass on Sundays, and but little destruction of what was valuable. 
Once a body of soldiers came to the great cathedral of Notre-Dame, the 
St. Paul's of Paris, and began to pack up the church furniture and load 
it in a van. A bold beadle went off straight and told the Commune. 
They sent down a delegate, who replaced everything as it was, and the 
beadle graciously wrote to the Commune that he was satisfied. Decrees 
were made to renew for a certain period commercial bills that were falling 
due, and to suspend the payment of house rents. These things were 
matters of necessity in time of war, and the Assembly itself, in a less 
degree, did the same. But the greater part of the meetings of the Commune 
were spent — it is a matter of mere history — in ignoble disputes, displays 
of petty vanity, futile and ridiculous proposals, and daily conflicts of 
authority. How can men govern if they have never learnt ? What 
chance under an imperial system could there possibly have been of 
acquiring even the elementary maxims of the conduct of public business ? 

One thing they were determined upon — that the Vendome Column 
must be thrown down. That was the big column erected in honour of 
Napoleon's victories, and coated with the bronze of conquered cannon. 
Trophies of imperialism and military pride were offensive ; down the 
column must come. But when it came down they managed the business 
with such regard for the neighbouring property that the fabric of the 
work was but little damaged, and it stands there again now tall as ever. 

Meanwhile the Federal troops were being overmatched at Neuilly, 
and MacMahon's trenches were creeping nearer and nearer to the forts 
of Issy and Vanves. Few shells fell inside the town, but the bombard- 
ment outside was terrible. Cluseret had been dismissed, and Rossel took 
his place. He was young, of great intellectual ability, stainless in life, 
romantic ; he cared little about the current disputes, but he cared heart 
and soul for the Republic ; an active soldier, though inferior in military 
skill to Cluseret. But he never had a fair chance. Military affairs were 
almost an anarchy. The Committee of Public Safety, as it was called, 
had been set on foot by a majority of the Commune; a large minority, 
including some of the best of them, were with difficulty prevented from 
seceding altogether. The disorder of affairs increased ; some newspapers 
were suppressed ; arbitrary requisitions began to be made. As for the 
War Office, it was hampered in every step by the old Central Committee, 
which insisted on its own way in military action ; and when Rossel com- 
plained to the Commune, they were powerless to assist him. Fort Issy 
was crumbling beneath the Versailles fire. Once it was almost abandoned, 
then quickly reoccupied. But the moral effect was fatal, and early in 
May Paris learned that the tricolor flag was floating over its ruins. 

And yet the Federals fought well. Day after day I saw them march 
to the front, singing and gay, each with his loaf impaled on his bayonet. 
' They got paid for it,' says some one. Yes, a shilling a day. I wonder 
how many of those men were alive a month afterwards. They were 
mostly ignorant, often reckless and vicious. But they had an idea that 



350 EDWAED BOWEN 

in some way or other the reign of emancipation and brotherhood was 
come, and that they had to fight for it. Of the temper in which they 
worked I have said something already, and I will only add this. I have 
before me a pile of newspapers that were sold by thousands in the 
streets, the typical journals of the time : the ' Vengeur,' the ' Cri du People,' 
the ' Mot d'Ordre,' the ' Bappel.' Find, if you can, in one of these a single 
word of instigation to disorder, to outrage, or to cruelty. And all the 
while not only the newspapers of Versailles, but the Assembly itself, was 
proclaiming every day that the criminals of Paris must be taken and 
shot. One more thing : there was plenty of literature sold in the streets 
that was infamous and disgusting, as, for that matter, there is still. But 
if there was any difference in public manners, in the general tone of 
decency at meetings of amusement or of politics, if there was any distinc- 
tion as regards the places to which an honest woman might go, between 
the time of the Empire and that of the Commune, I believe the advantage 
to have been on the side of the Commune. I cannot say it for certain ; 
I only know that I heard mob orators proclaim it aloud amid the applause 
of their audience. 

Eossel, who declared that if his orders had been carried out he could 
have saved Fort Issy, now resigned, and went straight off to prison. He 
had no military successor ; Delescluze was nominated as Delegate of 
War. He was not a soldier, but he was respected, and they hoped he 
would be obeyed. Probably by this time few of the defenders of Paris 
had much hope of success. Thiers was besieged by applications from 
persons, many of whom were probably impostors, who sent word that 
they would abandon to him this or that position of defence. Once a 
proposal of the kind was very near succeeding ; some culprits were caught 
in the act of arranging matters with the emissaries of the Government. 
Strange as you may think it, they were not put to death, but only sent to 
prison. But now in the Versailles army the massacre of prisoners began 
to occur again. Thiers actually promised the Assembly that no pardon 
would be granted without their consent to the leaders, and the soldiers 
were unchecked in the ferocity with which they began to treat their 
prisoners. Some time afterwards T was rambling over what was left of 
Fort Issy, 1 and talked to a soldier who had been one of those engaged in 
its capture. ' A difficult matter ? ' I said to him. ' No,' he said, ' in the 
end we had only to walk in.' ' Many prisoners taken in it? ' I asked. 
' No,' he simply answered, ' on tua tout ce qu'on trouva.' There were 
some in the Commune now who began to remember the hostages, and 
ominous suggestions were made. But still the reluctance to shed blood 
prevailed, and the proposal found no favour. 

The end came at last. The means of defence were worn out ; discipline 
was almost gone, though men like Dombrowski still played their part 
bravely ; and MacMahon was close to the gates. Fort Vanves had fallen 

1 The great bombardment of Issy and its capture were after Edward Bowen had 
returned to England. The allusion in the text is therefore to a second visit to Paris, 
which he paid some months afterwards. 



THE COMMUNE OF PARIS 351 

on May 13 ; on the 19th the Central Committee declared itself responsible 
for the conduct of the war, and if the struggle had not been hopeless 
before, it would have become so now. Cn Saturday, the 20th, a tremendous 
fire was opened upon all the west and south-west of the city ramparts. 
On Sunday, the 21st, they were almost abandoned, and by three o'clock 
that afternoon the Versailles troops were pouring through the breaches in 
the walls. Dombrowski receives the news, sends for reinforcements, 
despatches a note to the Commune that if they are sent he can he 
responsible for the city. The message was read as they were assembled 
at the Hotel de Ville ; it was the last sitting of the Commune. It dis- 
appears now from history. Some of its members met repeatedly during 
the scenes that followed, those of the 'Public Safety,' those of the 
delegations, and others ; but all that was done after this was done either 
by the remnants of the old committee of the National Guard, or by 
individuals acting together or alone as best they could. 

That Sunday evening was mild, calm, and starry. The streets, the 
cafes, the theatres were full. A rumour of the entrance had spread, but 
it was not believed. All through the night the troops poured in, as the 
Greeks poured into Troy. No one had organised a system of defence, if 
indeed any were possible. On the Monday morning came an appeal 
from Delescluze, characteristic of the man. ' Enough,' he said, ' of 
military nonsense. No more gilt lace and strategy. Make room for the 
people, who fight bare-armed, and want no generals for their barricades.* 
That was stirring, but it was not the way to win ; some battalions obeyed 
it only too well, and broke their ranks. But still Paris was roused. 
There were those, it is true, who, like Felix Pyat, showed themselves 
once at the Hotel de Ville, talked much of dying for the cause, and then 
disappeared altogether. But now barricades rose in every street, and as 
the Monday went on, and for the four days that followed, the soldiers of 
Versailles made their way inch by inch through streets and houses, amid 
fire and corpses, till all was over. 

I need not describe the whole week. Imagine only the troops 
crowding in in resistless numbers, fighting furiously, and rarely giving 
quarter ; and the defenders falling back from point to point, weaker and 
weaker, knowing that they fought for their lives, or rather for a bare 
chance of life — wild, desperate, half maddened by passion and defeat. 
There were three principal columns of invaders, Lamirault on the north, 
Douay in the centre, Cissey along the south. For the defence one notices 
as most energetic Dombrowski above all in the centre, a prodigy of 
activity and devotion, Malon and Vermorel on his right, Varlin on the 
left. Mere workmen were as good as soldiers now for animating the 
resistance, and the steadiest men came to the front. Delescluze, though 
ill and exhausted, was not one to flinch from his post, nor Cournet. ' I 
saw one barricade,' said one of the principal actors to me, ' where we 
went in two hundred strong, and came out fifty.' 

There are in Paris three elevated spots which might serve as citadels 
of defence, the Trocad<5ro, the Pantheon, and Montmartre. The first of 



352 EDWAED BOWEN 

these was never held in force ; it was seized the first afternoon. On the 
Tuesday, Lamirault was in possession of Montrnartre, which had been 
ill defended ; and by the afternoon of that day shells were pouring from 
its height upon the Federal batteries in front of the Tuileries. In the 
centre and on the south side the resistance was more sustained. The 
Ministry of Finance was in flames ; gradually the troops crept round and 
along the southern wall, and burst through from house to house ; the 
streets were flowing with blood. 

The morning of "Wednesday brought to the civilised world news which 
none that heard it will ever forget. Paris, so the message ran, was in 
flames. The Tuileries were burning, the Palace of the Legion of Honour, 
all the chief buildings of the city, even, a little later, the Hotel de Ville. 
Viewed from Versailles it seemed as if the entire city were ablaze. ' The 
destruction of Paris ' was the heading which appeared for some days in 
the ' Times.' It was an exaggeration ; but several public edifices and 
some hundred private houses were, that day and the nest, in ashes. 
Against the defenders of Paris rose a cry of horror, of which the echoes 
are not dead yet. "What is the truth on the subject ? This only can be 
said for certain. Some buildings and some houses were undoubtedly 
binned intentionally by the Federal commanders, in some cases to gain 
time for retreat, in others to prevent the turning of a barricade. Some 
buildings were with equal certainty set on fire by the attacking batteries, 
partly without intention, some (I can guarantee the fact) of set purpose. 
As to the Tuileries, a strong sympathiser with the party of Versailles told 
me that he saw shells from Montrnartre dropping all the Tuesday in its 
neighbourhood. On the other hand, there is some evidence for the theory 
of incendiarism ; and without attaching much weight to the testimony — 
which exists in profusion — of witnesses who seem to me quite untrust- 
worthy, I am inclined on the whole to lean towards the view that the 
Tuileries were set on fire at the last moment by the actual soldiers who 
had been defending it. ' A crime, if so,' says everyone who hears it ; 'to 
destroy the monuments of history, and the triumphs of architecture, is a 
barbarous act.' "Well, barbarous perhaps. But remember that you are 
speaking of men who did not look on the glories of Louis XIV. and the 
trophies of art as we do. I think they saw in them big buildings into 
which a common man was never allowed to penetrate, which existed for 
the pleasure of emperors and courtiers, and, moreover, buildings the blaze 
of which might give the defenders some twenty-four hours longer life in 
this world. As for the Hotel de Ville, the case is different. It was the 
centre of the insurrection, the pride of the Paris commonalty; and no motive 
of spite could operate to its injury. How it fell, in the middle of the 
"Wednesday, is a profound mystery. It certainly was not, any more than 
the destruction of the Tuileries, by the decision of the few leaders who 
were there ; it may have been the work of a private incendiary, but I fear 
the question must remain unsolved. I may remark that the famous art 
gallery of the Louvre was never even threatened, though at one time it 
was in danger from the spread of the flames ; and that if the Federals 



THE COMMUNE OF PAEIS 353 

had wished to blow up half Paris, they could have done it in a few hours. 
However it may be, Wednesday saw, amid the blaze of burning buildings, 
a further advance of the army ; more than a third of the city was in their 
hands ; they reached now to the foot of the Pantheon on the south, resist- 
less in their progress, and not without massacre of even unarmed prisoners, 
and on the north side the defenders were driven back into the eastern 
half of the city. 

Thursday came with fresh horrors. By this time almost all attempts 
at concerted defence were abandoned ; each leader did what he could, with 
those whom he could get to follow his guidance. And now, in the midst 
of the agonising struggle, there arose in some of them the tiger which lies 
crouching beneath some human hearts, and which defeat and despair 
will, at a terrible moment, awaken. Of many of those who were fighting 
there in the first rank, I believe that even in that death-agony they would 
have done no cruel thing, and unquestionably no cruel thing was ever 
done by their common resolve. But yet that Thursday is a day of bitter 
memory. The hostages were still in prison. Already on the Tuesday 
evening Bigault had bethought him of one prisoner against whom he 
cherished a violent enmity. He went to his prison, asserted what 
authority he had, and on a frivolous ground of treachery caused him and 
three others to be shot. On this Thursday, Jules Ferre", of his own accord, 
and without consultation with the other leaders, went to the prison of 
La Roquette, where the hostages were detained. He called out six of 
the most important, and brought in a detachment of thirty men. They 
came out into the courtyard of the prison ; the archbishop gave his 
absolution to the other five, they took their places and died with him. 

The same day there were in another prison twenty Dominican monks 
who had been accused — no one knows on what evidence — of making 
signals to the enemy. These were now told to go out into the street. 
Men with guns were waiting there as they came. Eight escaped, twelve 
were killed. This was done by a colonel in the National Guard. 

Once more — it was the following day — a body of prisoners collected 
from more than one prison were being marched along under an escort of 
Federals, in the Rue Haxo. A cry arose that they were to be shot, and 
in some minds the thought was father to the wish. Some took their part ; 
others cried out for blood. Varlin, who had been leading the resistance 
in this quarter for four days, tried to save them. He was threatened 
himself by the mob ; savage passion won the day, and one by one they 
were shot down. 

These are the massacres of the Commune, as they, are called. 
Terrible indeed they are, and so terrible that some people forget that 
there remained to the last two hundred more hostages who were not shot. 
But I would ask you only, with regard to these crimes, to remember this. 
They were perpetrated by men who had been fighting through the week 
amid shot and flame, who had seen friend after friend die at their side, 
and who knew that if they fell themselves into the hands of the enemy 
death was their certain fate. The defenders of the city were being shot 

A A 



354 EDWAED BOWEN 

down, in cold blood, literally by thousands. A well-known doctor, who 
had taken no part in the events of the last two months, was shot 
because he was a socialist. Wounded men in the hospitals were taken 
out and shot by order of officers, because the fact of their being wounded 
proved that they must have been fighting for the Commune. Horrible 
as the deeds which I have related are, do they equal in ferocity and guilt 
the murders to which officers like General Vinoy and General Galliffet 
were leading, and some of them encouraging, their soldiers ? 

That same night Dombrowski's body was brought in. He had died 
fighting. He was a simple soldier, almost the only one who had taken 
no part in the struggles of faction, but had done his very hardest from 
the first day to the last in a cause which he thougbt a good one. 
His body was laid, by torchlight, beside the Column of July, and each of 
his soldiers, as they passed beside it, stooped down and kissed his fore- 
head. 

It is easy to picture the last two days of the week, during which, 
inclosed in a circle drawn nearer and nearer, the relics of the defeated 
party still carried on a hopeless struggle. Hopeless indeed it was, for 
victory was out of the question, and every man taken who had his hands 
black with powder, or who wore any uniform, or who looked in any way 
suspicious, was put to death at once. A few last scenes have yet to be 
told. 

The Belleville quarter made in the end but little resistance ; the men 
there were simply exhausted. But the Bastille barricade and the Chateau 
d'Eau barricade were defended with extraordinary resolution. Near a 
barrack in the east of the city there is a large open space with a fountain 
in the middle ; the army had carried the streets which commanded it. 
Two members of the Commune called on those behind them to make a 
charge. They leaped forward and reached the middle of the square ; not 
a man had followed them. Bullets were coming like hail. They couched 
behind the fountain and then rushed back. One, Vermorel, fell; the 
other, Cournet, escaped and survived. 

The Pantheon had been carried, and Milliere, a journalist, was arrested 
by the troops. A captain of the line came up : ' Shoot him,' he said. ' I 
am neither a combatant nor one of the Commune,' said Milliere ; ' I am 
a journalist and a deputy of the Assembly.' ' You are a viper and an 
enemy of society,' answered the captain. He made two soldiers force 
their captive upon his knees on the steps of the church of the Pantheon. 
' Vive l'humanite' ! ' were his last words as he fell dead. The captain (his 
name is Garein) told this story himself with pride at Versailles. General 
Vinoy perhaps was present himself : it is a certain fact that he gave his 
subsequent approval to the murder. 

But it is not necessary, perhaps not desirable, to go through the 
scenes of butchery, as they are to be found in the evidence of the ' Times ' 
correspondent, of sworn witnesses — some of them Versailles officers — at 
subsequent trials, of more than one eye-witness who has related them to 
me himself. You have probably heard the word jpetroleuse. The story 



THE COMMUNE OF PARIS 355 

ran that women had gone about with petroleum, setting fire to houses out 
of mere malice. Every woman who looked ragged, or who could not 
stammer out a good account of herself, fell under suspicion, and no 
sooner was the cry of xietroleuse raised than all hope for that woman 
was gone. No one knows how many wretched creatures perished under 
the accusation. Well, it was false from first to last. Not one single 
woman was ever proved to have acted thus from one end of the week 
to the other. If you wish to know on what authority I say this, it is on 
the authority of the chief law officer of the Versailles Government. , 

I have named some few of the leaders as resisting to the last. Valles 
was believed to have been taken and killed, but he really escaped. 
Theisz and Cournet, when the last barricade feU, found refuge in a house, 
disguised themselves, and after some adventures fairly got away. Eossel 
was captured and shot six months afterwards. Varlin was seized when 
all the fighting was over, and brought before one of the generals, who 
ordered him away to execution. They made him walk for an hour 
through the streets, bound, insulted, attacked. He gradually sank. 
' That young meditative head,' so writes one of his friends, ' which had 
never had a cruel thought,' was hacked with sabre cuts. He was carried 
along, placed on the ground, and shot. He was the man, you will 
remember, who risked his fife to save the victims of the Rue Haxo. 

I believe the number of those killed to have been at least twenty 
thousand. As many more — for they became too numerous to shoot — 
were carried away as prisoners. I spare you the recital of some of the 
things that occurred at Versailles. It happened that shortly afterwards 
I had an opportunity of using some slight influence with the Government 
of Versailles. I had a promise that if I could name one man among the 
Commune for whom I wished to intercede, an application should be made 
to M. Thiers in his favour. I named Malon. I had a message afterwards 
that he was safe in Switzerland, but how he got there I do not know. 

To relate the escapes of some of them would be interesting, but I have 
not time. Let me tell you the end of Delescluze. His health had long 
failed, and labour and anxiety had exhausted what strength was left. On 
the last day but one he saw that the cause was utterly lost. He did not 
wish to survive it. ' I have had enough of Cayenne and the hulks,' he 
said. His comrades spoke to him as to a man about to die. From a few 
friends only — one of whom described to me the scene — he concealed his 
intention. The sun was setting behind the smoke of burning houses. 
The street and open space by the Chateau d'Eau was empty, close to an 
unoccupied barricade. Dressed in ordinary costume, but with the scarf 
of his now extinct office, carrying no arms but a walking-stick in his hand, 
he walked slowly across the boulevard. He was the only living creature 
there. His grave austere face looked solemnly onwards, he never once 
turned round. When he came to the barricade, the old man mounted it 
steadily, and stood quietly for a moment on the top : then the fatal bullet 
struck him. He was a man, as I humbly think, of partly mistaken aim, 
and partly perverse action. Would you rather have been Delescluze, 

a a 2 



356 EDWARD BOWEN 

who fell on the barricade in a ruined cause, or the Marquis Galliffet, who 
shot old men and women as they marched along in the ranks of the 
prisoners to Versailles, and is now an honoured and decorated general ? 

Some months afterwards, being in Paris, I heard that there was to be 
a private auction of Delescluze's few books, for the benefit of his surviving 
sister, and I went to it. Only a small group of men was there ; among 
them I remember one young workman close to the table, a tall fine- 
looking man, much interested in what was going on. There came in the 
middle of the sale one book in which were written a word or two of 
affectionate dedication, rather touching in their expression of respect for 
the old revolutionary leader. The young man I mentioned began to bid ; 
five francs were offered, six francs. ' Ten francs,' he said. There was a 
pause ; and then there were one or two more bids of eleven or twelve. 
' Twenty francs,' said the workman. The small group seemed surprised, 
and I saw even looks of emotion ; but there was another bid. Twenty- 
one francs — twenty-two francs. ' Thirty francs,' cried the man, and he 
had the book. I bought one or two myself for a few francs ; they are of 
no value ; here they are. 

On Sunday morning, May 28, a handful of insurgents still held the 
cemetery of Pere-Lachaise, in the extreme east of the city. I have seen 
it said that there was no fighting there ; no one who saw the place after- 
wards could suppose so. They fought behind tombstones and trees, 
beaten back and shot down ; I know of one man who fought to the very 
last, even with the butt of his rifle in the end; then threw it dowm 
climbed over the wall, and by some miracle escaped. 

So ended an experiment in political government, which seems to me 
more dramatic in interest and more fertile in instruction than the history 
of any similar period that I know. These things happened sixteen years 
ago in the most cultured capital in Europe. As there are no books on 
the subject which are even approximately truthful, I have thought it 
worth while to put together an outline of the facts, on every word of 
which, if you will only take my own veracity for granted, you may rely 
as certain, up to the limits that reasonable evidence and proof can 
guarantee. I am not now going to ask you which party was in the right 
in a contest where one side wrote on their standard ' The Unity of France,' 
and the other' The Rights of the People.' There are few struggles — and I 
am not prepared to say that this is one — where virtue, loyalty, and 
wisdom are all combined and banded against their opposites. Nor am I 
going to draw any moral from the story that I have told. I shall have 
told it to little purpose if those who have done me the favour of listening 
cannot draw morals, of probably equal value, for themselves. 



357 



VIII 

EVIDENCE BEFOEE THE BOYAL COMMISSION 
ON SECONDAEY EDUCATION 

[On July 25, 1894] l 

The Commissioners present were : The Eight Hon. James Bryce, M.P. (in 
the chair), the Eight Hon. Sir J. T. Hibhert, K.O.B., M.P., the Hon. and 
Eev. Edward Lyttelton, M.A., Sir Henry E. Eoscoe, D.C.L., M.P., the 
Very Eev. the Dean of Manchester, D.D., the Eev. A. M. Fairbairn, D.D., 
Mr. E. C. Jebb, M.P., Mr. E. Wormell, D.Sc, Mr. Henry Hobhonse, M.P., 
Mr. M. E. Sadler, Mr. H. LleweUyn Smyth, Mr. G. J. Cockburn, Mr. J. H. 
Yoxall, the Lady Frederick Cavendish, Mrs. Bryant, D.Sc, Mrs. Henry 
Sidgwick, the Hon. W. N. Bruce (Secretary). 

I. The Examination by the Universities of Secondary Schools 

Question. (Chairman.) I believe that you entertain decided opinions 
on the question of the extent to which it is desirable that the Universities 
should be given any control over the secondary schools of the country ? 

Answer. A good many years ago I ventured to print something on 
the subject, 2 which is perhaps out of date now, but I still entertain the 
same opinions, generally speaking, that I entertained then. 

Q. Do those views which you have expressed go at all to the action of 
what is now known as the joint board of the two Universities ? 

A. The experiment has been conducted with more success than I could 
have expected, chiefly because it has been carried out in a less ambitious 
way. No attempt has been made to carry out the larger programme 
which was before the country, or, at any rate, before the headmasters, 
some twenty years ago. The result is, I think, fairly, and not more than 
fairly, satisfactory. 

Q. As regards the various methods which have been suggested for the 

1 Reprinted from the Report of the Commission by leave of the Controller of 
H.M. Stationery Office. It should, however, be stated (a) that the evidence is not 
given quite in its entirety, since a few of the questions put to the witness were either 
unimportant, or were not such as to elicit from him any additional opinion or argu- 
ment ; (&) that the evidence has been somewhat rearranged so as to bring together 
all the answers upon one point. 

2 Vide pp. 316 ff. 



358 EDWAED BOWEN 

examination of schools, is there any one which you are inclined to prefer ? 
I will call your attention particularly to the action of the joint board, and 
to the habit which the greater schools themselves have formed of inviting 
examiners, who are usually University men, to come and examine their 
pupils, as also to the proposals that have been made with regard to sub- 
mitting boys leaving school to an examination similar to what is called in 
Germany the Abiturienten-Examen ? 

A. The old system of private examination always worked fairly well ; 
at any rate, the schools that could afford to pay large prices always got 
good examiners. x\s regards the general examinations — what are called 
the certificate examinations — my knowledge of the subject ought not to 
be put against that of any experienced headmaster, because it does not 
fall to me except indirectly to appreciate what has taken place. But as 
far as that experience has gone, the examinations have been but 
moderately good ; they have not, for example, been, in my opinion, as 
good as those that are conducted ordinarily by the Civil Service Com- 
missioners. Putting the Oxford and Cambridge examinations of schools 
against the Civil Service Commissioners' examinations, I should say that 
the latter are, on the whole, the better of the two. It is perhaps almost 
paradoxical to say it, but I think it is the truth. The Civil Service 
examinations seem to me to be, on the whole, very good ones, and not 
sufficiently appreciated by the world, and I suppose that in the case of a 
general public Abiturienten-Examen it is that Commission which would 
do the work, or something analogous to it. 

Q. (A commissioner, later on in the examination.) In what respects 
do you think that the examinations conducted by the Civil Service Com- 
missioners are better than the examinations conducted by the Oxford and 
Cambridge Joint Board ? 

A. There I simply speak as a professional examiner and schoolmaster. 
Beading over their papers, and seeing the questions that are set, and the 
carefulness of the arrangement of the standard, I should say that the 
former seem to be on the average better than the latter. 

Q. It has been suggested that if there were an Abiturienten-Examen 
it should be placed under the control of a public department, or under the 
control of the Universities. I gather from your answer that you would 
prefer the control of a public department to that of the Universities ? 

A. Yes, personally. 

Q. (A commissioner, later on in the examination.) How would 
those remarks apply to inspection, not examination '? 

A. I am against inspection altogether. 

Q. Against inspection by any body whatsoever ? 

A. Yes. 

Q. But in the schools that are aided by public money and local taxa- 
tion grants, or under the Technical Instruction Acts, you would recognise 
that there must be some form of control by the granting authority, or the 
rating authority, which makes those grants ? 

A. I conceive that it is so,-but I have no knowledge myself upon it. 



EVIDENCE ON SECONDAEY EDUCATION 359 

II. A General Leaving Examination 

Q. Would you desire to see a general Abiturienten-Examen 1 

A. I am not desirous of it at present. Considering the very great 
trouble and very great cost of such a system, I do not feel very anxious 
for it at the present time, but I should say again that my opinion is not a 
very good one in that respect, because I have not a large knowledge of 
any other than the chief public schools. My acquaintance with those is 
considerable, but I do not know very much of the larger circle of schools. 
Speaking only of what I do know, I think it is easy to pay too large a 
price for an ordinary Abiturienten-Examen. 

Q. Do you conceive that the multiplicity of the [various] examinations 
[for entrance to the professions] is a practical difficulty in the way of 
schools ? 

A. No ; that is not true, I think, as regards the chief ' public schools.' 

Q. Would it, for instance, be an advantage to the schools if, instead of 
having to provide for the needs of boys who are going to offer themselves 
for these different examinations, there were one uniform examination 
which should govern the various branches of public careers and the 
various professions, whether such an examination were conducted apart 
from the school examination or were conducted in the form of an 
Abiturienten-Examen ? 

A. My answer as far as my experience goes is this : I should not 
attach a very great value to it ; I should be so very much afraid of the 
practical difficulty of working, the great expense, the constant friction 
with schools, the overpowering pressure that would be brought to bear by 
such an examination on the curriculum. I should be very much afraid of 
obstacles being placed in the way of free development of our studies. 

Q. (A commissioner, later on in the examination.) I understand that 
you are opposed to any compulsory leaving examinations, because of the 
effect of the compulsory leaving examination upon the curriculum, 
cramping and affecting the whole course of the work of the school ? 

A. I am anxious with regard to it. 

Q. On the whole you would not recommend the Commission to set up 
any compulsory leaving examinations for the use of secondary schools ? 

A. I am rather nervous and anxious about it than actually opposed to 
it. I can conceive it done, but I can foresee so many difficulties that 
might arise that I should look upon it with some apprehension. 

Q. You would fear that the whole course of a scholar's life at school, 
and the whole teaching in a school all a scholar's life, would to some 
extent be directed with a view to the ultimate examination ? 

A. Yes, I should fear so. Everybody knows that we are greatly 
influenced by examinations. I think that the general complaint is that 
we are too much in fear of examinations now. 

Q. (Chairman.) You mean it often happens that the master sees a 
line in which his teaching might be developed properly, but is deterred 
from following that line by thinking that no value could be given to it in 
the examination ? 

A. Yes. 



360 EDWAED BOWEN 



III. Best Age for passing from a Public School to an University 

Q. Have you any opinion to express upon the proper age at which 
boys should pass from one of the what are called ' public schools ' to the 
Universities ? 

A. Yes, I have a somewhat strong opinion upon that, which, rightly or 
wrongly, I have preached for a long time. I am of opinion that the age 
tends to become too high for leaving school for the University. ... I 
should say that in the last generation the age has become higher ; whether 
it has become so in the last few years I have some doubts. I have taken 
some pains to inquire, and I do not learn that the immediate tendency in 
the last few years has been to raise the age ; but I should wish that the 
age should be distinctly lowered. 

Q. What age would you think the proper one ? 

A. I am sorry when a boy goes to the University later than his 
eighteenth birthday. He now goes much oftener after it than before. 

Q. Would you not say that it might be still better if he went about 
his seventeenth birthday ? 

A. I should not go quite so far as that. I should hardly go farther 
than I have gone. I should prefer that a boy should join college before 
he is eighteen ; that leaves a considerable limit. 

Q. What do you consider to be the causes which have made the age 
of going from school to the University somewhat later than it used to be ? 

A. It tends to keep high through several reasons. The chief of them, 
I think, is the pleasantness of schools. Fathers do what their boys wish, 
and the boys are always happy at school. That pleasure at school is 
altogether a different thing since fifty or sixty years ago. The particular 
eminence of games is one which is entirely of late creation. That tends 
very largely indeed to keep boys at school, because there is such a grip 
kept upon the good players. 

Q. Is this grip kept upon good players by the sentiment of the school 
and the houses, or also by the masters ? 

A. I am afraid it is quite as much one as the other. . . . When a boy 
becomes seventeen or eighteen years of age he is very often a persona 
grata to his master, and the master likes to keep him for the sake of 
discipline and example. 

Q. That is assuming him to be a good boy ? 

A. Yes ; but it is very largely the case that a master prefers not to 
let his big boys go, for considerations which it would be perhaps harsh to 
call selfish. 

Q. Has the fact that the college scholarships can now be competed for 
in most, or nearly all, colleges up to the age of nineteen, and sometimes 
up to the age of twenty, any influence ? 

A. Large influence, because the scholarships are gained, as you are 
aware, at the age of nineteen, and a boy may stay at school in some cases 
for nearly another year afterwards. 



EVIDENCE ON SECONDAEY EDUCATION 361 

Q. So it may happen that a boy may stay at school till nearly his 
twentieth birthday ? 

A. Yes. That, of course, is rather a warm subject at present. Some- 
thing is being done at the Universities towards attempting to remedy the 
defect you have mentioned. 

Q. Are there any scholarships which can be competed for after the 
age of twenty ? 

A. I think not. The disadvantages of boys remaining at school so 
late seem to be both as regards themselves and the school. I consider it 
a disadvantage for a boy to begin life and work much later than twenty- 
one. It does harm to the school in so far as it tends to make masters 
treat boys as older than they are. There is something unnatural in 
telling a boy of nineteen to go to bed at a fixed early hour. That sort of 
thing cannot but tell awkwardly upon the whole school. 

Q. You mean it leads inevitably to a certain relaxation of discipline, 
because the discipline which is suited for the younger boys is not suitable 
for a boy of nineteen or twenty ? 

A. It is very difficult indeed to arrange that it shall be the same ; 
and, generally speaking, boys, because they like to remain, submit them- 
selves to restrictions which ought not to apply to them at all. When you 
let the best boys stay, it tends to raise the general age. There are, it is 
true, in most schools rules of superannuation ; but it is not the wish of 
some masters, and it is difficult for others, to enforce them. 

Q. Are you in a position to say how far the views which you have 
expressed to us are shared by other masters of public schools ? 

A. I am afraid there would be a great difference, and very warm 
difference, of opinion. 

Q. The views which you have expressed are, I believe, held by a good 
many people at the Universities ? 

A. Yes. The Universities throw the blame on the schools for keeping 
the boys, and we throw the blame on the Universities for not asking for 
them earlier. Dr. Bidding, who was the headmaster at Winchester, 
wrote to me in reply to a certain pamphlet which I published nearly 
twenty years ago, saying that his opinion strongly coincided with mine 
upon that subject, and I have very often heard it since, of course. Still, 
there are many wise people who differ. 

Q. I suppose you would feel, on the other hand, that the very causes 
which have brought about this raising of the age are the forces which 
would oppose themselves to such a reform as you suggest ? 

A. The pleasantness of schools is a new thing, and the publicity of 
the games is a new thing. 

Q. Do you think that the extreme devotion to what are called athletics 
will be a permanent factor in school fife ? 

A. Yes, I should think so, speaking merely of games. 

Q. You do not think that it may to some extent prove a passing 
passion or fashion ? 

A, I think not ; I hope not. 



362 EDWAED BOWEN 

Q. Have you ever heard the argument' advanced that boys at eighteen 
are too young to bo trusted at the University ? 

A. I have never heard anyone go so far as that. I have hoard it 
suggested of sixteen or seventeen, but I do not agree with it. I am per- 
fectly willing to trust boys after seventeen, with the discipline of the 
Universities as it is now. 

IV. Tlie Train ing of Teachers 

Q. Have you any observations to offer to us upon what is called the 
training of teachers, or instruction in the science and art of education ? 

A. Yes, I should be glad to say a word or two ; chietly because the 
Commission, I think, ought to have before them a sort of advocatus 
diaboli. The energy that has been displayed on the subject in pressing 
forward the training of teachers has been so great that it seems to me to 
be quite possible to over-estimate the desire for it which is generally held 
in the profession. I think the important thing to remember is that as 
regards the larger public schools, and, indeed, the main body of what are 
ordinarily called public schools, something entirely different is wanted in 
a master from what is commonly wanted at a primary school, or indeed 
at the ordinary day schools, the grammar schools of the country. A 
master at a large public school is chiefly a moral and social force ; a 
master is this to a much less extent at the other schools I have mentioned. 
That seems to me to bo a consideration which has never been sufficiently 
taken into account by those who advocate the universal training of 
teachers. To deal with boys where you have them completely under 
your control for the whole of every day is an altogether different thing, 
and requires different virtues in the teacher from those that are required 
in the case of day-schools. I cannot see how you can hope to give 
training in this. It is true that training even in the other and lower 
departments of work may have its value, but I wanted to point out that 
they fill a much smaller space ; they are to be taken only for what they 
are worth, and that is not half of the whole. Then such a thing is 
recommended by many people who see the results, which in the main are 
good, of primary training colleges. With regard to those, again, it must 
be remembered, though it is constantly forgotten, that they do an entirely 
different work from anything which might be suggested even as desirable 
in the case of public schools. The training college for primary school 
teachers is a sort of university ; it teaches the subjects far more than it 
teaches the mechanical art of teaching. In fact, I believe it is a common 
complaint now, that it does so to an increasing extent ; that at the 
Government training colleges too little is taught of the art, and too much 
is made of the actual instruction. The training of public schoolmasters, 
I imagine, would be an enormous affair. Probably the Commission have 
no knowledge of the number of secondary school teachers that there are. 

Q. We have had some statistics, but they do not profess to be exact 
or exhaustive '? 



EVIDENCE ON SECONDARY EDUCATION '.'jy.; 

A. I have tried hard to invent (statistics, and have really failed. Jiut, 
considering that the boys in secondary school- east be numbered, I 
suppose, by hundred* of thousands— at all events you must go to between 
100,000 and 200,000 — that you have a master for le? -:s than every twenty 
boys, and that the master does not stay in the profession probably as much 
as twenty years on an average, one gets some sort of idea of the amount 
of training you would have to give, if every master has to be taught. In 
my case, having gone through the work of an assistant master for a long 
time, and having fairly Joarnt it, and remembering as I can having begun 
it with no technical knowledge, it seems to me that the trade can only 
really be learnt in the same way as most other trades are — by your own 
failures, by experiment, and by the influence of, and association with, 
other masters. In saying that I do not deny that some amount of 
technicalities might be usefully taught, but it does seem to me that the 
price you would be likely to pay would be very much greater than would 
fairly be paid. 

<^. What price are you contemplating ? 

4. The price in time and money. 

Q. How much time are you assuming ? 

-4. I am assuming that each master had to go for half a year to a 
training college. It seems to me that that would be far more than the 
profession can stand, and that you are likely to spoil your supply of masters 
rather than improve it. The masters who go to the best schools are not 
very poor men generally, but the profession on the whole consists distinctly 
of poor men, and the price that would have to be paid is a very heavy one. 

Q. What has been suggested to us in evidence is not that they should 
go to training colleges, but that in the Universities, for instance, there 
should exist provision for giving instruction in what is called the science 
or theory of teaching, and also opportunities for practice, and for seeing 
teaching given by persons confessedly competent ? 

A. As regards the first part of that, I had said nothing, because it 
seems to me that mere pedagogy could be learnt in a fortnight. You 
only have to read a certain number of books, and the examination could 
be passed. I do not imagine that as regards that there is any great 
amount of difficulty. 

Q. If it could be learnt in a fortnight, you would probably attach no 
very great value to it ? 

.4. It would not be very difficult, I think, at a very small cost of time, 
to read through the half-dozen or dozen books which would be placed 
before any future master by a professor in the art of pedagogy. But I 
was dealing with a demand which is very largely made, that some masters 
should actually have had some training in teaching. 

Q, Take the case of Harrow, and schools similar to Harrow ; the 
young men who become assistant masters there all come, I suppose, from 
one or other of the older Universities ? 

A. Yes. 

<^. And have graduated there with honours ? 



364 EDWAED BOWEN 

A. Yes. 

Q. Would you see any great difficulty in requiring those who intended 
to devote themselves to the profession of teaching to attend a course of 
lectures extending, perhaps, over one or two terms in the science and art 
of teaching, and during that time to practise themselves a little in teach- 
ing in schools in the place ; or would you consider that that, although easy, 
would be valueless '? 

A. I should attach very small value to it. A really good master for 
such a school as that from which I come is a very valuable thing, and a 
headmaster would think twice before he would reject him because he had 
not gone through that course. 

Q. The question would rather be whether he would not be more 
efficient for the purpose of teaching if he had received that training, and 
whether it would not save him from some of those mistakes which 
inexperience might lead him into at first, and make him sooner fitted for 
the intellectual part of his work ? 

A. Although I acknowledge that to some extent that is the case, 
I think it is connnoiily exaggerated. That is all I can say. 

Q. You said that a master in one of the great public schools is chiefly 
a moral and social force ; but, after all, does he not give teaching ? 

A. Yes. 

Q. And his teaching may be better, or it may be worse ? 

A. Yes ; but I think it will not be very much better or worse in virtue 
of what you have described. It may be perhaps a little, but I think it is 
commonly exaggerated. 

Q. In other words, you do not think that such instruction as can be 
given in the science and art of teaching, based either upon psychology or 
upon ethics, will make any substantial difference to his ultimate effective- 
ness as a teacher ? 

A. Quite so ; I think that it would make a very small difference. 

Q. You think it is so much a matter either of natural gift or the 
power of picking up from experience, that the element of systematic 
training may be practically ignored ? 

.4. I almost go as far as that. 

Q. Then, in other words, you have not come across persons whose 
mistakes and deficiencies as teachers would have been to any sensible 
extent cured by their having received a better special preparation before 
they entered upon their teaching work ? 

A. It would hardly have been touched by the books they have read. 
I cannot conceive that they can, without enormous cost of time and 
money, have gone through a practical training such as would have cured 
those mistakes to any great extent. I accept the few words you said a 
few minutes ago, but so much depends upon persons' idiosyncrasies that 
this will have but small effect. 

Q. And although you spoke more particularly with regard to the 
public schools — that is to say, to the great boarding schools, where the 
master is constantly in communication with the boys dming then play 



EVIDENCE ON SECONDARY EDUCATION 365 

hours as well as their work hours — you would extend those observations 
to teaching in secondary schools generally, including, of course, the day- 
schools, which form the great majority of secondary schools ? 

A. The argument which I use appears less in proportion as the mere 
intellectual teaching forms a larger proportion of the school-work. 

Q. That is to say, in a day-school where the master's sole business, or 
almost his sole business, is the imparting of knowledge, you think the 
element of special training might have more relative value than in a 
boarding-school ? 

A. Yes, I quite accept that ; but even then I do not agree with the 
very great stress laid upon it by most persons. 

Q. (A little later in the examination.) Is there any other point upon 
which you would like to express an opinion to the Commission ? 

A. I should like to add to what I was saying about the training of 
teachers, that I have been unable to conceive any machinery by which the 
art of teaching can be given practically to masters. The art of teaching 
seems to me so much a matter of personal power and experience, and of 
various social and moral gifts, that I cannot conceive a good person made 
a good master by merely seeing a class of boys taught, unless he was 
allowed to take a real and serious part in it himself; unless he became a 
teacher himself. I can understand that at a primary school you can 
learn by going in and hearing a good teacher at work ; but the teaching 
of a class of older boys is so different, and has so much of the social 
element in it, and it may vary so much, that I should despair of teaching 
a young man how to take a class, unless he was a long time with me. To 
try to do it hurriedly, or to do it perfunctorily, seems to me useless. 

Q. You do not think that there are certain mental laws or processes 
common to, or applicable to, the teaching of all scholars alike, whether 
primary, secondary, or University, which it is possible to understand 
better by having one's attention systematically called to them, and the 
use that may be made of them ? 

A. No, I do not think so, although it seems rash to say it, because a 
bad man teaching history well is a far worse thing than a good man 
teaching history badly. 

Q. But what is suggested is that a good man might teach history 
better ? 

A. Still, all the same, I venture to suggest that the man himself is so 
much more important than the details of school-work, that it is not worth 
while thinking of the second in comparison with the first. 

Q. (A Commissioner.) You said that the teachers of the public boarding 
schools were chiefly moral and social forces. Does it not occur to you 
that it is possible that the moral and social force, even in a most admirable 
person in that capacity, may be largely discounted and counteracted in 
schools by want of ease and power in the art of teaching ? 

A. Yes. 

Q. And I suppose it often happens that a graduate going from a 
university to a school of the type we are now considering finds he is 



366 EDWAED BOWEN 

inclined to be a failure in the art of teaching and has to give up the 
work ? 

A. Very seldom, if he is such a person as we are thinking of. 

Q. But there is no guarantee that he is likely to be a suitable person 
for the work to which he goes ? 

A. The headmaster would never think of taking him unless he was. 

Q. I am thinking of the pedagogic qualification. Neither the 
assistant master nor the headmaster can know that this particular 
graduate is likely to be successful as a teacher ? 

A. I can hardly agree with that, because when you know a man you 
can pretty well form an estimate beforehand as to whether he will be 
likely to succeed. One can gauge to a very large extent his qualifications ; 
for instance, say, good humour, good health, the tone and justness of his 
mind. 

Q. Then you take the view that the art of teaching in practice, and 
discipline in particular, may be considered as very largely the reflex of a 
man's character upon the children ? 

A. Yes. 

Q. And therefore nothing but inherent character can go a very long 
way towards effective teaching ? 

A. I would go a very long way towards that. 

V. Public Schools and a Central Authority 

Q. (Chairman.) Have you anything to say with regard to the rela- 
tion which what are called first grade secondary schools, such as Harrow, 
should hold either to a central educational authority for the country or to 
any local authority within whose bounds they may happen to be situate ? 

A. This only, remembering again that I represent only a certain 
number of schools. We are very largely before the eye of the public, and 
we are hi less need of what you suggest than some other schools might 
be. That is the important thing to remember. In ten or twenty of the 
large schools everything that is done is known to the public and to their 
clientele. At the present moment they do not need what you are 
describing. 

Q. In other words, you do not think that there are anj 7 points on 
which they could receive substantial help or aid, either from a local 
authority — by which I mean a county or provincial authority — or from a 
central educational authority ? 

A. No, I do not. As regards the first, I really see no connection ; as 
regards the second, while education is in its present state I am so afraid 
of our being cramped. I believe the Commission has before it the original 
author of a certain story with regard to a French minister having pulled 
out his watch. I invented that story some thirty years ago. There is no 
pressing danger of that at the present moment, but I can of course easily 
conceive that with the examples of France, Germany, and Sweden before 
us, there might be. 



EVIDENCE ON SECONDAEY EDUCATION 367 

Q. You would conceive that would be a danger to be guarded against 
in the formation of a central authority ? 

A. Yes. 

Q. You would not feel that such schools as Harrow or Eton, which 
are, as you say, in the public eye, and whose alumni continue to be 
interested in them, would be sure to be preserved from any encroach- 
ments ? 

A. I should still be very much afraid of being cramped. One knows 
that the Germans are of the same race as we are, and education in 
Germany is seriously affected by the power of the Government. It is true, 
in fact, of every civilised European country except England. 

Q. Of course, in all those countries education has been organised by 
the State ? 

A. Yes. 

Q. In England there never has been any State organisation of secon- 
dary education at all ? 

A. Quite so ; and whatever merit it may have, the danger of cramping 
the work of schools seems to me one that it is almost impossible to over- 
rate. 

Q. Would you apply that even to entrusting further powers to the 
Universities than they now enjoy ? 

A. I should be very sorry to give the Universities further powers. 

Q. You think the same danger of cramping might apply in the case of 
any control by the Universities ? 

A. I have no reason for wishing to be controlled by the Universities. 

Q. I will not say controlled, but influenced ? 

A. I think the influence of the Universities is as great as it should be. 

VI. Headmasters and their Assistants 

Q. (Chairman.) Have you any opinion to express upon the question 
of whether an assistant master should have an appeal against dismissal 
by a headmaster, or whether a headmaster should have an appeal against 
dismissal by a governing body ? 

A. As regards the first there is, I believe, no difference of opinion 
among teachers on the subject. If it were not for difficulties which may 
be familiar to, at all events, the Chairman of this Commission, a Bill 
would have been passed long ago in Parliament to alter the present law. 

Q. That is to say, to give the assistant master a right of appeal to the 
governing body ? 

A. Yes ; I know nobody who does not think so. Things work 
smoothly at schools without it, but at any moment occasions might arise 
which would make it highly desirable that there should be an appeal, 
and an Act of Parliament with a single clause would give it, practically. 

Q. What opinion would you express with regard to the question 
whether a headmaster, dismissed by the governing body of his own 
school, should have an appeal to any other and what authority ? 



368 EDWARD BOWEN 

A. I cannot conceive any authority at this moment which would be 
capable of exercising such a function usefully. 

Q. It would bo a question of what authority, of course, but the point 
is rather this : whether there are cases in which the dismissal of a head- 
master by a governing body ought to be subject to review by some 
external authority ? 

A. I am afraid I cannot offer an opinion about that. My knowledge 
is limited ; and nothing that I could say, I think, would be of value with 
regard to any but the chief schools. 



369 



IX 

AENOLDIDES CHIFFEES; 
Or, THE ATTITUDE OF THE SCHOOLMASTER 

A ' U.U.' Essay » 

[1897J 

The biographer of Arnoldides Chiffers seems to have regarded that emi- 
nent man as an ideal ruler of boys. 

' No one [he writes] ever left the school without bearing the impress of 
his striking personality. His rule was inflexible, but just. He would 
sink, indeed, the master, and become a boy himself among boys ; he 
would seek at times the popularity that flowed from his joining personally 
in their games ; but he could resume on occasion a dignity which would 
tolerate no compromise. Caring for nothing in the world but the success 
of the institution which he helped to govern, he regarded its fame as the 
first of objects, and its very cricket matches as tests of its welfare. Work 
with him was work, and play was play. No lounging or smiling before 
the desk of siich a teacher ; every pupil feared him while at class, but, the 
lesson over, had nothing to fear. Lavish in rewarding excellence, he 
never passed over a fault. Schoolboy errors, indeed, he saw with the eye 
of a schoolboy, unless they trenched on what to him was sacred ground- 
study, order, the majesty of work ; and he hated above all things, in a 
growing mind, slackness and inattention and frivolity. As the " Times " 
writer said of Dr. Benson at Wellington, it was a treat to see the zealous 
satisfaction with which he chastised the boy found out in a lie. In a 
word, he studied day by day to bring his own moral influence to bear on 
the characters of those entrusted to him, he made his approval their 
standard, and taught them to regard one another, not from the point of 
view of fleeting popularity or schoolboy honour or social gifts, but from 
the eternal point of view of right and wrong.' 

The little that I know of Arnoldides makes me believe that it would 
have given him great pleasure that I should quote this estimate of him 
in the forefront of an essay. But he would have been gradually mystified 
as I go on. For, paradox though it may be, I am about to hold up the 
distinguished schoolmaster that I have named as the example of all the 
things that one of his trade should not be. I had thought of calling this 
paper ' The Idols of the Profession ' — meaning Baconian idols — but I 
could not think of four emblems to call them by ; so I must fall back on 
Arnoldides, and let us consider his excellences in some sort of order. 

1 Reprinted by permission from the Journal of Education, April 1897. 

B B 



370 EDWARD BOWEN 

Eegard, for example, the crisp division of his day into times of work 
and play. In a copy-book, this would come well. In the educational 
leading article of a daily paper, it would have its merits. I can think of 
nothing so appropriate for the training college in which our successors 
will all have to spend a couple of years. But on what, in reality, in the 
heaven or earth or the waters under the earth, does it rest as a basis ? 
Why are we to dissolve the natural and fruitful marriage of grave and 
gay ? I can just imagine some one arguing that you do not bring qua- 
dratic equations into football. Well, there is not time for them ; the play 
is so short and the lessons so long ; and yet there is more in the ' Mr. 
Barlow ' idea than modern preceptors are usually willing to allow. But 
wilt thou know, vain man, that play without work is dead ? Work is 
systematic effort, conscious progress, deliberate ambition to be better to- 
morrow than to-day, the delight in new-developed gifts — and who would 
care much for games unless all this were included ? So, again, humour, 
paradox, fancy, nonsense gild the solidity of a lesson. But it is not 
worth while to argue against an idea which no one holds. If a passage 
in the book lends itself to fun, we neither repress it nor wish to. Why 
not be as natural over your Tacitus as you would be if you were working 
some Wednesday morning at the proofs of your dictionary of psedagogics, 
and some one brought the new ' Punch ' into your room for a moment ? 
' Why not, then, make half the lesson play ? ' Because it would be a 
waste of time. You can afford one minute in sixty ; you cannot afford 
a dozen. But that is the only reason, and not the dignity of your 
teaching. 

I hope, however, that when I speak of work enlivened by play, I shall 
not be supposed to mean merely jokes. The schoolmaster's jests have 
been satirised, from Goldsmith downwards, quite enough to place us on 
our guard. I mean, of course, the spirit of play, the good temper, cheer- 
fulness, gaiety, if you will, the disposition to make the best of things, the 
absence of suspicion, the tolerance, the forbearance, the unity. Let there 
be make-believe war, if you like, between the master and the form ; it 
may help the game along ; if they perfectly know that it is make-believe 
and nothing more, they will play their part dutifully, and not take unfair 
advantages. Such a temper does not lend itself to idleness or disorder ; 
it does not even tend to it, as far as I can see. To whistle in school 
would have been a crime under Mr. Chiffers, of course, and his boys were 
afraid to do it. But the class that I am describing will not whistle because 
it would spoil the understanding, it would argue a selfish isolation of 
temper, it would not be the proper thing, it would interrupt the proceed- 
ings, it would not be ' playing the game.' A pupil who behaves in this 
spirit does not need punishnients, any more than he needs them when 
fielding at cricket ; he ought to feel the suggestion of such a thing, unless 
in the remote background, as an affront. Nor will he much need prizes 
and rewards either. Perhaps it may be remembered that the model 
whose biography is so thumbed in all educational libraries was lavish of 
rewards for merit. We are not told about his punishments ; we only know 



AKNOLDIDES CHIFFERS 371 

that his attitude towards the falsehood was what, archbishops or not, we 
should all be ashamed of. But he ought to have known, as we know, 
that rewards are almost as demoralising as punishments, and that the less 
we have of them the better. Very few boys want them ; the energy that 
they impart to the few does no good to the many. They are unsocial, 
they discriminate where we want to solidify, they feed vanity where we 
want to inspire companionship. A very little temperate praise, just to 
give voice to the common admiration for excellence, is the best reward, 
and generally enough. Mr. Chiffers gave Jones a book bound in calf for 
translating a satire of Horace without a mistake. If he had only re- 
marked that Jones was not such a very bad construer after all, it would 
have had as much effect, and would have been more in the humour of the 
game. 

And so with the lounging. Why should not they lounge ? ' Because 
they cannot attend to the work ? ' That is certainly not the case. Every 
gentleman whom I am addressing at this moment is sitting with the 
easiest adaptation of himself to his chair that he can command ; but I am 
nevertheless sure either that he is attending, or, anyhow, that he will not 
contradict my argument on the ground that he is not. One listens better if 
one is comfortable — except, perhaps, on warm afternoons. May they then 
loll anyhow ? They do not want to ; but, if they did, no. The limit is 
simply that point at which they would cease to show respect, I do not say 
to their beloved instructor, but to each other, and the system, and to him 
as representing it. So long as they demean themselves as they would in 
a drawing-room, he should be content. 

You see, I am going on the theory that boys are willing to learn ; and, 
if an angel from heaven proposes any view of lessons other than this, or 
founds any pleas or maxims in defiance of it, let him — be certificated ! 
But, as this is so true that the exceptions must not be allowed to spoil the 
argument, we must work from first to last in the spirit of such an hypo- 
thesis. The schoolmaster of our biography, you may have noticed, never 
cares to make the lessons pleasant, which is the alpha and omega of 
teaching ; he is feared in school, but not out of school ; whereas the atti- 
tude of his pupils towards him ought at all times and seasons to be much 
the same. "When lessons are disliked it is generally because they are too 
hard ; and of course everybody cannot have everything exactly suited to 
his powers. But climbing a rock and fielding a drive are hard work ; and 
it is never the hard work, in moderation, that is disliked, but the ex- 
pected impossibility, or the want of companionship and friendliness; or 
physical dullness of soul which cannot at times be helped. And one's 
brother must be forgiven imtil seventy times seven. If a boy wishes to 
work and wishes to attend, but cannot do either of them because human 
nature is feeble, there is a chance that sternness may mend him, but only 
when everything else has failed. The exceptional boy who does not wish 
to do either is different ; but slackness and inattention and frivolity, which 
the eminent schoolmasters hate, are things which many growing boys 
cannot avoid. All I mean to convey is that the great mass of our forms 

B B 2 



372 EDWARD BOWEN 

would rather learn than not, and, if a master drive instead of helping, he 
will gain what is hardly worth gaining. With luck one may carry out the 
theory to almost unheard-of lengths. It is a solemn fact that a. class that 
I know of came up voluntarily to school on a whole holiday morning last 
year— not for any hribe, exemption, or consideration whatever. It was. 
no doubt, a kind of freak ; and they did it more or less by way of a show- 
off, and for the fun of narrating it to an incredulous world ; but the thing 
was really done. 

Look, too, at the attitude of our friend Arnoldides towards his pupils' 
games. He tried ' to be a boy among boys.' But why should he not 
have been just what he was ? Why a boy at games more than a boy in 
walking up to school or in an arithmetic lesson ? He was not ashamed, 
we read, to seek popularity by joining in play. He ought to have been 
ashamed of anything so silly. The notion that a master becomes popular 
by taking part in cricket or football is, of all absurdities, the most absurd. 
If he is good-tempered and gentle, and does not domineer, he will be 
popular, it' ho plays nothing more than the trombone. A taste for sports 
will give him the advantage of companionship, and an opportunity of 
studying human nature, but it will not make him liked or disliked any 
further than he intrinsically ought to be. And you will notice that the 
great drifters, essaying to be what he was not, a boy among boys, natu- 
rally omitted to become something more than his scholastic duties made 
him. and remained a sort of glorified tradesman. He had no outside 
pursuits. Perhaps he told his boys to have higher interests ; but he 
himself cared, you will remember, for nothing but the success of his 
school. Change the surroundings, and he would have cared as much for 
the success of boots or bicycles. Politics, pictures, the future of the 
legitimate drama, the missionary movement at the South Pole, all passed 
on and left him a schoolmaster, and nothing more. I do not wonder that 
' his rule was inflexible.' He had none of the moderating influences 
which help men to enlarge the narrowness, and withstand the domina- 
tion, of the best professions in the world. To be inflexible is a vice, not 
a virtue. But, once you have lost citizenship and worldliness. the im- 
pressible mind and the historic temper, it is not for nothing that you have 
been a boy among boys and not a man, that association with immature 
intellects has done the harm against which your precautions should have 
been taken, and that the teacher has — not, indeed, awaked and found 
himself a pedant ; for a pedant never awakes. 

' We next come to Cambodia. Cambodia,' said the governess, ' is 
almost as big as Siam.' ' Cambodia,' murmured the children, drowsily, 
'is almost as big as she is.' This came into my mind as a jest, but 
remains as a parable. The children had been so long taught to think of 
their teacher, and her methods and her rules, that she remained their 
standard of comparison when it should have been a district of Asia. This 
is what the good Mr. Chillers did when he endeavoured to leave upon the 
boys the impress of his striking personality. He devoted himself wholly, 
his biographer says, to bringing his moral energy to bear upon them. 



ARNOLDIDES CHIFFEES 373 

But, you will say, if be is by hypothesis better than they are, why should 
he not do so ? in the first place, it is not proved that he was better. He 
did not throw boots about the passages, or draw horses in his dictionary; 
but — although culture does help the judgment and offers wider horizons 
— it is not clear that he was beyond the boys in sympathy and self- 
restraint. But, secondly, what can be, and should be, consciously done 
in this direction is but little. The experience of teachers has not gene- 
rally brought the conviction that specially directed efforts can do much 
to change a boy's nature. It does most of the changing for itself. The 
building grows, like the Temple of old, without sound of mallet and 
trowel. What we can do is to arrange matters so as to give Virtue her 
best chance. We can make the right choice sometimes a little easier, 
we can prevent tendencies from blossoming into acts, and render pitfalls 
visible. How much indirectly and unconsciously we can do, none but 
the recording angel knows. ' You can, and you should,' said Chiffers, 
' go straight to the heart of every individual boy.' Well, a fellow-creature's 
mind is a serious and sacred thing. You may enter into that arcanum 
once a year, shoeless. And in the effort to control the spirit of a pupil, 
to make one's own approval his test, and mould him by the stress of our 
own pressure, in the ambition to do this, the craving for moral power and 
visible guiding, the subtle pride of effective agency, lie some of the chief 
temptations of a schoolmaster's work. 

I am ashamed to confess that I cannot remember whether Amoldides 
was a clergyman or not. It fortunately does not matter much to a 
schoolmaster's functions, unless he has to preach sermons ; and, anyhow, 
none are extant in print under Mr. Chiffers' name. But, whatever 
opportunity he may have had for exhortation, we know from the bio- 
grapher what sort of things he said. And in the pulpit discourses which 
w; hear — not of course in the place where we are this evening, but at 
other schools a good many miles away — how much there is, Sunday after 
Sunday, of the Chifferesque ! I am convinced that none of the preachers 
who address their immature congregations ever say on purpose what is 
not true. But a gay imagination enwraps and beatifies their conception 
of school life. ' You, my younger hearers,' said Mr. Chiffers, ' who have so 
newly left your homes for the first time to mix with a world of strangers ' 
— and yet ho knew as well as they did that every single young gentleman 
before him had been to another school for three or four years already. 
' Beware of the false ensnarement of popularity,' he went on ; ' it is not 
the best of your companions who are most esteemed by giddy applause.' 
But a day's observation would show to the teacher that this is exactly 
what does happen, and that, in most cases, a boy is liked because he 
deserves to be. ' If a thing that is wrong comes before you, say loudly, 
whoever hears you, that it is wrong.' Yes, but we know how a boy's 
more delicate reserve substitutes, with happy indirectness, the intellectual 
for the moral, and tells the evil-doer that he is a fool. ' Take my word 
for it,' Amoldides would say, ' it is only the cowards who tell lies.' The 
boys will not take his word, if they are wise. They know only too well 



374 EDWAED BOWEN 

that, while fear leads to some crimes of falsehood, it is more often the 
timorous who confess, and the bold bad boys who venture on the lie ; 
and those are the worst lies that are told. ' Think much of your past 
faults,' said Mr. Chiffers. ' Think of any other mortal thing in prefer- 
ence,' a healthy boy's nature would reply. ' Away with false phantoms,' 
he cried, ' of what is called schoolboy honour ' — as if schoolboy honour 
were anything else than honour ; and that virtue is the same in every 
age and time. ' Cherish it,' he should have said, ' and believe in it, and 
trust it to lead you to something even better.' ' Too often,' he used to 
warn his hearers, ' the throng around you will ask you to join in laughing 
at what is good and right.' In a school novel of course they will ; but 
outside those romantic pages what boy ever met with the phenomenon ? 
' Before giving your friendship to a schoolfellow,' he would tell them, 
' test and probe his moral worth, and select your friends among those 
only who are good.' That advice fell, I trust, unheeded. The quality 
of friendship is not strained ; and the boys know something of their 
Gospels. And he would conclude with telling the older boys to think 
every hour of the day about influencing the others towards virtue. Fancy 
the attitude of mind of the captain of an eleven who should say at the 
beginning of an innings, ' Go to, I will now use my moral influence on 
my team.' If a boy swears when hurt, he should tell him to stop that ; 
and, if he cribs in school, he should say, in the euphemism just alluded 
to, that he is a fool ; because everyone knows that you oughtn't to swear 
or crib. But that is not using influence ; it is keeping up the spirit of 
the thing, exalted conventionalism. All through his years the schoolboy's 
cherished idea, and that which makes schools hopeful things, is the idea 
that things ought to go on in the proper way, and that he himself ought 
to contribute to the propriety. If he has thrown stones he is half, or a 
quarter, sorry — but the dog was so tempting. If he is likely to lean 
towards graver wrong, the sternest terror that you can hold before him 
is that his house will be pointed at and talked of. Look at the silly con- 
ventions of the boys among themselves, and what they will do rather 
than break them. And they will be correspondingly surprised if their 
superiors lapse from a standard of similar elevation. A little time ago, a 
headmaster, in addressing the school about catching cold and efficient 
clothing, when he wished to speak of ' sweaters,' did not indicate the 
garment by a periphrasis, but actually used the word. Some boys were 
discussing at dinner afterwards whether he ought to have done so, and 
generally came to the conclusion that he ought not. The dear little 
prigs ! Depend upon it, the one foible of modern boys is that they are 
too prone to good behaviour. Conventionality rules the camp, the court, 
the grove, the fags below, and sixth form above. But it rules them 

slowly and progressively for their benefit. H , with all thy virtues, 

I love thee still ! 

For, if you want to swim against the stream, you must first learn to 
swim with it. The civic temper is the preparation for the heroic, and to 
overcome is less glorious than to lead. It is the same in the inner life 



AENOLDIDES CHIFFEES 375 

of our profession, and we train ourselves, if we care for our work more 
than our hobbies, in smoothness, conformity, tolerance. Schoolmastering 
and politics— these are the two trades to which this art is needful beyond 
most others. Opportunism is the back view of the edifice of which 
statesmanship is the facade; the edifice is one and the same. The 
Exchequer and the Admiralty are at war, but the Government must 
pass the Budget. A permanent secretary finds his political chief hopeless 
and incapable, but he neither says so nor appears to think so. You are 
a headmaster, and your colleagues read the sporting papers ; you are an 
assistant, and your head drones and sleeps; or your governing body does 
pig-headed things, or your boys are vulgar. But the art of life consists 
in making the best of the tools that you have, and playing your part with 
courage, as if they were all keen and strong. It is what the great Dun- 
donald could not do, and that makes the moral of his life. You believe 
in Church and State, and your environment is radical ; or you hold the 
newest heresies, and the tone of the place is all saints and mysteries. 
These things are all less important than what you have to do, and it is 
your business — to use the phrase once more — to play the game. Then, 
when you have once put self and vanity in the second place, you will be 
worth quite as much as a man, and worth much more as a schoolmaster. 
It will not seem unnatural if your pupils learn to do the same themselves. 
Character will shape together, interests will drift towards a common end. 
You will not have, like Mr. Chiffers, to pretend to take" a boy's point of 
view ; for, widely different as their thoughts are from yours, they will 
yet understand that your temper and desires are the same. If you talk 
with them, you may be a comrade without pretending to be a child : when 
they work with you, they will be your companions, wayward, frivoloiis, 
stupid, peevish, intractable perhaps, but companions, fellow-travellers, 
playmates. 

On the tombstone of Arnoldides Chiffers I believe it is recorded that 
in every respect he endeavoured to follow the example of the great school- 
master after whom he was named. It is probable that he did. A great 
man's weak points are more easy to imitate than his strong, and in the 
picture of Arnold himself, as he is drawn for us, there are features which 
further experience, if we had the creation of a new Arnold in our hands, 
would lead us to modify. He was no more a perfect teacher, we may 
presume to say, than Savonarola was a perfect divine. But all excep- 
tional men have their special task, and that of a reformer is by common 
consent the hardest. Mix together, if you can, John Knox and Goethe : 
try a combination, ad hoc, of Ezekiel and Pascal. Who can be so many- 
sided, so broad of soul, as the ideal schoolmaster should be ? Well, per- 
haps we shall never be so ourselves ; but it is our business, by our own 
little efforts, by meetings and conversations on such occasions as this, 
to try and produce him for the coming years ; assisted, I need hardly 
add, by a Teachers' Training Syndicate, and a department of the County 
Council. 



376 EDWAED BOWEN 



SONGS AND VEESES 1 

I 

Foety Yeaes On 

Forty years on,-when afar and asunder 

Parted are those who are singing to-day, 
When you look back, and forgetfully wonder 

What you were like in your work and your play 
Then, it may be, there will often come o'er you 

Glimpses of notes like the catch of a song — 

Visions of boyhood shall float them before you, 

Echoes of dreamland shall bear them along. 

Follow up ! Follow up ! Follow up 1 Follow up ! 

Till the field ring agam and again, 
With the tramp of the twenty-two men, 
Follow up ! Follow up ! 

1 Most of these songs and verses were published by Edward Bowen in 1886, and 
the order in which he then arranged them has been retained, the few additional 
ones being placed at the end. The edition had the following preface : 

' The songs which are here reprinted were written at various times during the last 
eighteen years, and have found an indulgent reception at the hands of several genera- 
tions of schoolboys. For whatever interest they may have awakened, they are 
chiefly indebted to the genius and skill of Mr. John Farmer, by whom nearly all of 
them have been set to music, and presented to an audience which, for the sake of the 
singers, as well as for his, has never been too harshly critical of the sentiments or 
the words. I ought to mention that some of the lines in No. XV. and two or three 
in No. XVIII. are the work of a friend. 

' A few other pieces are added, chiefly connected with Harrow ; these, though 
not of permanent interest, will perhaps find readers who may care to have them in 
print.' • 

An index to the Songs and Verses, as here printed, will be found at the beginning 
of the volume. 



SONGS 377 

Routs and discomfitures, rushes and rallies, 

Bases attempted, and rescued, and won, 
Strife without anger, and art without malice, — 

How will it seem to you, forty years on ? 
Then, you will say, not a feverish minute 

Strained the weak heart and the wavering knee, 
Never the battle raged hottest, but in it 

Neither the last nor the faintest were we ! 
Follow up ! &c. 

O the great days, in the distance enchanted, 

Days of fresh air, in the rain and the sun, 
How we rejoiced as we struggled and panted — 

Hardly believable, forty years on ! 
How we discoursed of them, one with another, 

Auguring triumph, or balancing fate, 
Loved the ally-with the heart of a brother, 

Hated the foe with a playing at hate ! 
Follow up ! &c. 

Forty years on, growing older and older, 

Shorter in wind, as in memory long, 
Feeble of foot, and rheumatic of shoulder, 

What will it help you that once you were strong ? 
God give us bases to guard or beleaguer, 

Games to play out, whether earnest or fun ; 
Fights for the fearless, and goals for the eager, 

Twenty, and thirty, and forty years on ! 
Follow up ! &c. 



II 
Lyon of Peeston 

Lyon, of Preston, yeoman, John, 

Many a year ago, 
Built on the hill that I live on, 

A school that you all may know ; 
Into the form, first day, 'tis said, 

Two boys came for to see ; 
One with a red ribbon, red, red, red, 

And one with a blue, — like me ! 

Lyon, of Preston, yeoman, John, 
Lessons he bade them do ; 

Homer, and multiplica-ti-on, 
And spelling, and Cicero ; 



378 EDWARD BOWEN 

Red Ribbon never his letters knew, 

Stuck at the five times three ; 
But Blue Ribbon learnt the table through, 

And said it all off,— like me ! 

Lyon, of Preston, yeoman, John, 

Said to them both, ' Go play '— 
Up slunk Red Ribbon all alone, 

Limped from the held away ; 
Blue Ribbon played like a hero's son, 

All by himself played he, 
Five ' runs up ' did he quickly run, 

And Bases got five, — like me ! 

Lyon, of Preston, yeoman, John, 

All in his anger sore, 
Flogged the boy with the Red ribbon, 

Set him the Gcorgics four ; 
But the boy with the Blue ribbon got, each week, 

Holidays two and three, 
And a prize for sums, and a prize for Greek, 

And an alphabet prize, — like me ! 

Lyon, of Preston, yeoman, John, 

Died many years ago ; 
All that is mortal of him is gone, 

But he lives in a school I know ! 
All of them work at their football there, 

And work at their five-tinies-three ; 
And all of them, ever since that day, wear 

A ribbon of blue, — like me ! 



Ill 

Raleigh 

When Raleigh rose to fight the foes, 

We sprang to work and will ; 
When Glory gave to Drake the wave, 

She gave to lis the Hill. 
The ages drift in rolling tide, 

Biit high shall float the morn 
Adown the stream of England's pride, 
When Drake and we were bom ! 
For we began when he began, 

Our times are one ; 
His glory thus shall circle us 
Till time be clone. 



SONGS 379 

The Avon bears to endless years 

A magic voice along, 
Where Shakespeare strayed in Stratford's shade, 

And waked the world to song. 
We heard the music soft and v/ild, 

We thrilled to pulses new ; 
The winds that reared the Avon's child 

Were Herga's nurses too. 
For we began, &c. 

Guard, guard it well, where Sidney fell, 

The poet-soldier's grave ; 
Thy life shall roll, O royal soul, 

In other hearts as brave. 
While Thought to wisdom wins the gay, 

While Strength upholds the free, 
Are we the sons of yesterday, 

Or heirs of thine and thee ? 
For we began, &c. 

IV 
Queen Elizabeth 

Queen Elizabeth sat one day, 

Watching her mariners rich and gay, 
And there were the Tilbury guns at play. 

And there was the bold sea rover ; 
Up comes Lyon, so brisk and free, 
Makes his bow, and he says, says he, 
' Gracious Queen of the land and sea, 

From Tilbury fort to Dover — ' 
Queen Elizabeth, &c. 

' Marry, come up,' says good Queen Bess, 
' Draw it shorter and prose it less ; 
Speeches are things we chiefly bless 

When once we have got them over ; 
Spenser carries you well along, 
And the Swan of Avon is rich in song — 
Still, we have sometimes found them long, 

I and the bold sea rover ! ' 
Queen Elizabeth, &c. 

' Queen,' he says, ' I have got in store, 
A beautiful school from roof to door ; 
And I have a farm of acres four, 
And a meadow of grass and clover : 



380 EDWAED BOWEN 

So may it please you, good Queen B.. 
Give rue a charter, firm and free ; 
For there is Harrow, and this is me. 
And that is the bold sea rover ! ' 
Queen Elizabeth, &.c. 

1 Bad little boys,' says she, ' at school 
"Want a teacher to rede and rule ; 
Train a dunce, and you find a fool : 

Cattle must have their drover : 
By rny halidome, I propose 
You be teacher of verse and prose — 
(What's a halidome, no one knows. 

Even the bold sea rover ! ) ' 
Queen Elizabeth, &o. 

' And this is my charter, firm and free. 
This is my royal, great decree — 
Hits to the rail shall count for three. 

And six when fairly over : 
And if any one comes and makes a fuss 
Send the radical off to us, 
And I will tell him I choose it thus. 

And so will the bold sea rover ! ' 
Qrieen Elizabeth, &c. 



V 
St. Joles 

When time was young and the school was new 

(King James had painted it bright and blue), 

In sport or study, in grief or joy, 

St. Joles was the friend of the lazy boy. 

He helped when the lesson at noon was said. 

He helped when the Bishop was fast hi bed ; 

For the Bishop of course was master then, 

And bishops get up at the stroke of ten. 

St. Joles hooray, and St. Joles hooroo, 
Mark my word if it don't come true ; 
In sport or study, in grief or joy, 
St. Joles is the friend of the lazy boy. 

If an a was possibly short or long, 

St. Joles would whisper it right (or wrong) ; 

If ever an e provoked a doubt, 

St. Joles' Lexicon helped it out ; 



SONGS 381 

Perhaps it wasn't in page and print, 
But it hinted a probable friendly hint ; 
And often indeed, if I must confess, 
ft was like to a sort of a kind of guess. 
St. Joles hooray, &c. 

No laws of scholarship, harsh and quaint, 
Could ever perplex the useful Saint ; 
No trouble of mood or gender come, 
But he settled the rule by the rule of thumb ; 
You could toss a penny, and surely know 
The way the genitive case would go ; 
For at tails and heads he was clear and true, 
And it always turned up one of the two ! 
St. Joles hooray, &c. 

But there came a morning of fear and dread, 
When the Bishop was up, and the Saint in bed ; 
And all the boys, from bottom to top, 
Instead of bishop, pronounced bishop ! — 
— However the guilty class might try, 
They lengthened o and they shortened i ; 
And the Bishop with righteous anger flames ; 
And off he went, and he told King James. 
St. Joles hooray, &c. 

O then King James, in his wrath and ire, 
Degraded St. Joles to Joles Esquire ; 
And now, to punish the awful crime, 
They get up at seven in winter time ; 
And oft the vowels in prose and song 
St. Joles' Lexicon tells you wrong ; 
And if you believe me, down at play, 
There's always fog on St. Joles' day. 
St. Joles hooray, &c. 



VI 
She was a Shepheedess 

She was a Shepherdess, so fair, 

Many a year ago, 
With a pail and a stool and tangled hair, 

Down in the plain below ; 
And all the scholars would leave their play, 
On merry King Charles's own birthday, 
And stand and look as she passed that way, 

And see her a-milking go ; 



382 EDWAED BOWEN 

But none, she said, 

Will I ever wed, 
But the boy who gets the Gregory prize, 
And crosses his t's and dots his i's, 
Down in the plain below. 

Sorely the monitor, great in Greek, 

Many a year ago, 
And the cricketing captain, slim and sleek, 

Down in the plain below ; 
Sorely the Latin er daily tried, 
With satchel and ciphering books at side, 
To make her his beautiful blooming bride, 

As he saw her a-milking go ! 
But none, &c. 

So the Gregory prizeman won the maid, 

Many a year ago, 
And the bells were rung and the service said, 

Down in the plain below ; 
And the cows gave double their milk that day, 
And merry King Charles came down to stay, 
And the fags had a general hip hooray, 

As they saw her a-milking go. 
But none, &c. 

And if this ditty of love be true, 

Many a year ago 
(x\nd you'll please forgive our singing it you), 

Down in the plain below ; 
O was there ever so sweet a pah', 
As both of them went a-milking there, 
With a pail and a stool and tangled hair, 

A-milking for to go ? 
But none, &c. 



VII 

Grandpapa's Grandpapa 

Do you know, grandpapa's grandpapa 

Had of study so unquenchable a thirst, 
That he went off to Harrow, fa la la ! 

And was placed in Lower Lower First. 
How the buttons on his blue frock shone ! 

How he carolled and he sang, like a bird ! 
And Rodney, the sailor boy, was one, 

And Bruce, who travelled far, was the third. 
For you know, &c. 



SONGS 383 

Then to Bruce grandpapa's grandpapa 

Said, ' Bruce ' (who travelled far), ' come along, 
We are ten summers old, fa la la ! 

So to hoops, and to merriment, and song ! ' 
' Oh no ! though I mourn,' he said, ' in truth, 

G.'s G., merry rollicking to mar, 
What's hoops, and effusiveness of youth, 

To a lad who has got to travel far ? ' 
For you know, &c. 

Then to Rodney grandpapa's grandpapa 

Said, ' Rodney, sailor boy, up away ! 
And with marbles, and with tops, fa la la ! 

'Mid the merry folks from town, pass the day.' 
But Rodney, sailor boy, ' No,' said he, 

' Brace tackles, and avast, and alas ! 
No marbles and jollity for me ; 

I have got to beat the French and De Grasse I ' 
For you know, &c. 

Then, then, grandpapa's grandpapa 

Went revelling away, in and out, 
'Mid the merry folks from town, fa la la ! 

While the marbles and the tops flew about. 
And of all the merry folks, fa la la ! 

In buttons and in blue frocks drest, 
Why be sure, grandpapa's grandpapa 

Was the topmost and merriest and best ! 
For you know, &c. 



VIII 
'Byeon Lay' 

Byron lay, lazily lay, 
Hid from lesson and game away, 
Dreaming poetry, all alone, 
Up-a-top of the Peachey stone. 
All in a fury enters Drury, 

Sets him grammar and Virgil due ; 
Poets shouldn't have, shouldn't have, shouldn't have, 
Poets shouldn't have work to do. 

Peel stood, steadily stood, 

Just by the name in the carven wood, 

Reading rapidly, all at ease, 

Pages out of Demosthenes. 



384 EDWAED BOWEN 

' Where has he got to ? Tell him not to ! ' 
All the scholars who hear him, cry, 

' That's the lesson for, lesson for, lesson for, 
That's the lesson for next July ! ' 

Peel could never, you needs must own, 
Ehyme one rhyme on the Peachey stone ; 
Byron never his task have said, 
Under the panel where Peel is read. 
' Even a goose's brain has uses' — 

Cricketing comrades argued thus — 
' Will they ever be, ever be, ever be, 
Will they ever be boys like us ? ' 

Byron lay, solemnly lay, 
Dying for freedom, far away : 
Peel stood up on the famous floor, 
Euled the people, and fed the poor ; 
None so narrow the range of Harrow ; 

Welcome poet and statesman too ; 

Doer and dreamer, dreamer, dreamer, 

Doer and dreamer, dream and do ! 



IX 

Giants 

There were wonderful giants of old, you know, 

There were wonderful giants of old ; 
They grew more mightily, all of a row, 

Than ever was heard or told ; 
All of them stood their six feet four, 
And they threw to a hundred yards or more, 
And never were lame, or stiff, or sore ; 
And we, compared with the clays of yore, 

Are cast in a pigmy mould. 
For all of we, 
Whoever we be, 

Come short of the giants of old, you see. 

There were splendid cricketers then, you know, 
There were splendid cricketers then ; 

The littlest drove for a mile or so, 
And the tallest drove for ten : 

With Lang to bowl and Hankey to play, 

Webbe and Walker to score and stay — 



SONGS 385 

And two that I know, but may not say, — 
But we are a pitiful race of clay, 
And never will score again. 
For all of we, 
"Whoever we be, 
Come short of the giants of old, you see. 

There were scholars of marvellous force, you know, 

There were scholars of marvellous force ; 
They never put fir) when they should put ov, 

And the circle they squared, of course. 
With Blayds and Merivale, Hope, Monro, 
Ridley and Hawkins, years ago,— 
And one that I rather think I know — 
But we are heavy and dull and slow, 

And growing duller and worse ; 
For all of we, 
Whoever we be, 

Come short of the giants of old, you see. 

But I think all this is a he, you know, 

I think all this is a lie ; 
For the hero-race may come and go, 

But it doesn't exactly die I 
For the match we lose and win it again, 
And a Balliol comes to us now and then, 
And if we are dwarfing in bat and pen, 
Down to the last of the Harrow men, 

We will know the reason why I 
For all of we, 
Whoever we be, 

Come up to the giants of old, you see. 



October 

The months are met, with their crownlets on, 

As Julius Caesar crowned them ; 
With slaves, the gentlemen thirty-one, 

And the ladies thirty, round them. 
But who shall be monarch of all, you ask ; 

Go ask of the boys and maidens, 
For that is the lads' and the lasses' task, 
And they choose him afar in cadence. 
October ! October I 
March to the dull and sober ! 
The suns of May for the schoolgirls' play, 
But give to the boys October ! 

c c 



386 EDWAED BOWEN 

' I vote for March, may it please you,' cries 

A student pale and meagre ; 
' He gives us theme and lesson and prize, 

And scholarship, O so eager ! ' 
But louder now in the distance floats 

A choice there is no disguising ; 
And you hear from two and twenty throats 

The chaunt of the boys uprising. 
October ! &c. 

' For May I For May ! ' the girls all say, 

' How mild the air that blows is ! 
How nicely sweet the soft spring day, 

Hoiv sweetly nice the roses ! ' 
But girl and scholar may pray and plead — 

The voice of the lads is clearer, 
And forty and four are the feet that tread, 

In time to the music, nearer ! 
October ! &c. 

' October brings the cold weather down, 

When the wind and the rain continue ; 
He nerves the limbs that are lazy grown, 

And braces the languid sinew ; 
So while we have voices and lungs to cheer, 

And the winter frost before us, 
Come sing to the king of the mortal year, 
And thunder him out in chorus ! ' 
October ! October ! 
March to the dull and sober ! 
The suns of May for the schoolgirls' play, 
But give to the boys October ! 

XI 

Euclid 

O have you, with Euclid before you, 

Full often despairingly sat, 
The Fifth Proposition to floor you, 

Your mind getting blank as your hat ? 
To the little black demon you owe it, 

The corner at C is his den ; 
He waits till you fancy you know it, 
Then makes you forget it again. 
For he sits, a sight for to dream on, 

In his black boots, tall and thin ; 
And some people call him a demon, 
And others a hobgoblin. 



SONGS 387 



worse than the rock to the seaman, 

worse than the blight to the tree, 
Is the face of the little black demon, 

Who lives in the corner at 0. 
He hops and he jumps without reason 

All over and under and through, 
And grins as he teaches his treason 

To logic, and Euclid, and you. 
For he sits, &c. 

How sides, by a curious juggle, 

Together are less than the base ; 
How parallel lines, with a struggle, 

Succeed in enclosing a space ; 
Then mixing up angle and angle, 

Puts lines where no line ought to be, 
And leaving your mind in a tangle, 

Goes back to his corner at C. 
For he sits, &c. 

But I up and I went and I took him, 

All capering under and o'er, 
And didn't he cry as I shook him, 

And didn't I shake him the more, 
And taught him respect for his betters, 

And thumped on his black little head, 
And squeezed him the shape of all letters 

And finally left him at Z ! 
For he sits, &c. 

And often as, nightly or daily, 

He dares to annoy you the least, 
You have only to rush at him gaily, 

Away goes the black little beast ; 
And all the bad creatures forsaken, 

That live on the page or the pen, 
Can't bear to be worried and shaken, 

And run away home to their den. 
For he sits, &c. 



XII 
The Voice of the Bell 

Every day, in the early misty morning, 

Hark how the bell is ringing, ding-a-ding, ding : 

First for a waking, second for a warning, 

Hark how the bell is ringing, ding-a-ding, ding : 

c c 2 



388 EDWAED BOWEN 

Oh, what a tongue to terrify the lazy, 
Never a respite, never stops or stays he, 
On- till the ears of the listeners are crazy, 
Ding, ding-a-ding ! 

Down at the game, a wearying and bruising, 

Hark how the bell is ringing, ding-a-ding, ding : 
Comes now a truce to winning and to losing, 

Hark how the bell is ringing, ding-a-ding, ding. 
Then, though the hill be muddy and begriming, 
Victory yet can make it easy climbing : 
Bless the bell, for the triumph it is chiming ! 
Ding, ding-a-ding. 

Half-past five, in the gloomy winter weather, 

Hark how the bell is ringing, ding-a-ding, ding ; 
Now to the fireside gather you together, 

Hark how the bell is ringing, ding-a-ding, ding ; 
Safe from the thought of boy or book or master, 
Fourth school's bliss — or possible disaster — 
Wish that the weeks might fly a little faster, 
Ding, ding-a-ding. 

Long long life to the bell and to its ringing ! 

Hark how the bell is ringing, ding-a-ding, ding : 
Three hundred years with an ever fresh beginning ! 
Hark how the bell is ringing, ding-a-ding, ding ; 
Long while it chimes to a newer life and sweeter, 
Work's true sons shall welcome her and greet her, 
Stronger than we, and better, and completer, 
Ding, ding, ding. 



XIII 
Underneath the Briny Sea 

Underneath the briny sea, 
Where be the fishes and the mermaids three, 
There lies Harrow as it ought for to be ! 
Big fish and little there, each shiny day, 
Climb up to construe, plunge down to play ; 
Get wise speedily, up upon the hill, 
Coming up to all schools just when they will ; 
Play well easily, weed and sand among, 
Never lose a match there, all the summer long ; 
Never take to bad ways, bully, steal, or lie, 
Fishes all are born good, naturally ! 



SONGS 389 

Underneath the briny sea, 

"Where be the fishes and the mermaids three, 

There lies Harrow as it ought for to be ! 

Bills when the fishes like, lock-up as they wish, 
Bolts and bars confine not independent fish ; 
Fruit sells for nothing there, if you like to buy. 
Ices all the year long tumble from the sky ! 
No trouble anywhere, labour none at all, 
Twenty scores of fags come rushing when you call ; 
Twenty scores of fags come, never miss it — why ? 
Fagging does itself all by machinery ! 

Underneath the briny sea, 

Where be the fishes and the mermaids three, 

There lies Harrow as it ought for to be ! 

Oh, what a life there, down below the wave, 
All among the sand heaps, merry fishes have ! 
Lessons get the full mark, whether bad or good, 
Fishes never guess wrong — couldn't if they would ; 
Greek turns to English by the rule of thumb ; 
Sums have the answer written on the sum ; 
Repetition learns itself, never need to try — 
Everyone has prizes, generally. 

Underneath the briny sea, 

Where be the fishes and the mermaids three, 

There lies Harrow as it ought for to be ! 

Which is the better, man, or boy, or fish, 

To five life lazily, swimming as you wish, 

Lolling dull heads about, twirling weary thumbs, 

Or to take sweet and bitter as sweet and bitter comes ? 

Wealth without toil is a sorry sort of lot ; 

Learning unworked for is just as well forgot ; 

Good beats bad, when the fight is only free, 

Both up at Harrow here, and under the sea. 

Underneath the briny sea, 

Where be the fishes and the mermaids three, 

There lies Harrow as it ought for to be ! 



XIV 
Sober Dick 

What sober Dicky sees, 

When all aglow 
Fire lights the winter nights, 

Boys only know. 



390 EDWAED BOWEN 

Out, gas — no soul it has — 
Out lamp and wick ; 
In the embers, ruddily gilt, 
Wonderful things are often built ; 
Sober Dicky can see them all, O sober Dick ! 

There lies a field of grass, 

Eopes all around ; 
Who's that has got the bat, 

Hits off the ground ? 
Who plays amid the blaze, 
All ruby-thick ? 
Coals applaud with a coaly cry, 
Sparks in yellow and amber fly ; 
Sober Dicky it surely is, sober Dick ! 

See, in the stately light 
Glows yonder Hall ; 
Folks sent to Parliament, 

Pitt, Fox, and all. 
One big amazing wig 
Flares hot and quick ; 
Mr. Speaker is made of coal, 
Yet you will think it wondrous droll, 
Like to sober Dicky he is, sober Dick ! 

Where, chin on hand, he looks 

Eight through the bars, 
Yon grate is full of fate, 

Cups, prizes, stars — 
Gold tips — generalships — 
Straight throw and kick — 
Lucky Latin and easy Greek, 
Holidays every mortal week, 
Sober Dicky has seen them all, sober Dick 

When coals are dark and dead, 

All burnt to dust, 
Sink, light, and turn to night — 

So Fancy must ! 
Warm flame, vision of Fame, 
Fades passing quick ; 
Was the coal a teller of truth ? 
Does imagining poison youth ? 
Sober Dicky is dreaming now, sober Dick ! 



SONGS 391 

XV 

Willow the King. 

Willow the King is a monarch grand, 

Three in a row his courtiers stand ; 

Every day when the sun shines bright, 

The doors of his palace are painted white, 

And all the company bow their backs 

To the King with his collar of cobbler's wax. 

So ho I so ho ! may the courtiers sing, 
Honour and life to Willow the King ! 

Willow, King Willow, thy guard hold tight ; 
Trouble is coming before the night ; 
Hopping and galloping, short and strong, 
Comes the Leathery Duke along ; 
And down the palaces tumble fast 
When once the Leathery Duke gets past. 
So ho! &c. 

' Who is this,' King Willow he swore, 
' Hops like that to a gentleman's door ? 
Who's afraid of a Duke like him ? 
Fiddlededee ! ' says the monarch slim : 
' What do you say, my courtiers three ? ' 
And the courtiers all said, ' Fiddlededee ! ' 
So ho! &c. 

Willow the King stepped forward bold 
Three good feet from his castle hold ; 
Willow the King stepped back so light, 
Skirmished gay to the left and right ; 
But the Duke rushed by with a leap and a fling — 
' Bless my soul ! ' says Willow the King. 
So ho ! &e. 

Crash the palaces, sad to see ; 
Crash and tumble the courtiers three ! 
Each one lays, in his fear and dread, 
Down on the grass his respected head ; 
Each one kicks, as he downward goes, 
Up in the air his respected toes. 
So ho ! &c. 

But the Leathery Duke he jumped so high, 
Jumped till he almost touched the sky ; 



392 EDWAED BOWEN 

' A fig for King Willow,' he boasting said, 
' Carry this gentleman off to bed ! ' 
So they carried him off with the courtiers three, 
And put him to bed in the green-baize tree. 
So ho! &c. 

' What of the Duke ? ' you ask anon, 

' Where has his Leathery Highness gone ? ' 

he is filled with air inside — 

Either it's air, or else its pride — 

And he swells and swells as tight as a drum, 

And they kick him about till Christmas come. 

So ho ! ho I ho ! may his courtiers sing, 
Honotir and life to Willow the King ! 



XVI 

June and the Scholar 

THE SCHOLAR 

What a tune, 
Kind June, 
You are singing all the noon, 
Where the grove makes merry with the breeze, with the breeze, 
Low and merry, all the song 
That the wind bears along, 
O June, be a sister, and stay among the trees ! 



Never fear, 
Scholar dear, 
In the morning of the year, 
Was not all the sunny beauty made for you, made for you ? 
Take the bright shiny day, 
Take the pleasure and the play, 
The shade and the twilight, the dawning and the dew. 

the scholar 

Do not fly, 
Sweet sky, 
Though the blaze of morning die, 
Stay and linger in the flushing of the west, of the west 
If you go, they will fade, 
Soft meadow, sunny glade, 
The glow into dullness, the music into rest. 



SONGS 393 



When the rose 
Full blows, 
When the surly winter goes, 
I will come with the swallows and the sun, and the sun, 
And the grass shall be bright 
In the glad June light ; 
Far and away, till the world is dead and gone. 



XVII 
Cats and Dogs 

(He hath got a quiet catch. — Taming of the Shrew, II. i.) 

For cats and dogs the custom is to wrangle as they play, 
But youths intent on games should be more sensible than they ! 
A low dispute in scenes polite would not be thought the thing, 
Where bright in light, with dance and feast and bowl, dwell Court and 
King. 

When in the yard at exercise you choose to take a part, 
Converse with friends, whene'er you will, upon the batsman's art ; 
And if about a catch you hold an independent view, 
Reflect it may perhaps be false, and shout not out it's true. 

Football, methinks, if played at all, should go with voice demure ; 
Of lines of sight the human eye can hardly e'er be sure ; 
But cries proclaiming eagerly where balls have passed in air 
Would shame a wolf, and in the dust abase a polar bear. 



XVIII 

Fairies 

When in the morning cold and bleak, 

In spite of wind and weather, 
The wise and foolish, strong and weak, 

Throng up to School together, 
From off the plain, from round the hill, 

The fairy thoughts arisen 
Begin the day of work and play 

With hope, and whim, and vision : 
Awake the old, suggest the new, 

Heart after heart rejoices — 
Ho ho 1 ha ha ! Tra la la la ! — 

So sound the fairy voices. 



394 EDWAED BOWEN 

Front all the lowland western lea, 

The Uxbridge flats and meadows, 
From where the Ruislip waters see 

The Oxhey lights and shadows ; 
They tell of rambles near and far, 

By hedge, and brook, and border ; 
Of random freak and frolic war, 

And Freedom born of Order ; 
Of Friendship, knit with wealth of wit, 

And wisdom linked about it — 
Ho ho ! ha ha ! Tra la la la ! — 

Or quite as close without it I 

From Wembley rise and Kenton stream ; 

From Preston farm and hollow, 
Where Lyon dreamed, and saw in dream 

His race of sons to follow ; 
They point to Labour's leaden feet, 

To Glory's glow and glitter ; 
To sweets of Learning, partly sweet, 

And even partly bitter ; 
They chant in time a stately rhyme, 

The sober songs of matin — 
Ho ho ! ha ha ! Tra la la la ! — 

x\nd quaver into Latin ! 

And as from north and east amain 

They throng, the fairy people, 
The echoes range across the plain, 

And gather round the steeple ; 
Through football acres, grass and clay, 

The mighty murmurs quicken ; 
From goal to goal they swifter roll, 

And swell, and throb, and thicken ; 
Like beat of drums the music comes, 

While viewless voices mingle — 
Ho ho ! ha ha ! Tra la la la ! 

And set the veins a-tingle. 

O'er twenty leagues of morning dew 

Across the cheery breezes, 
Can fairies fail to whisper true 

What youth and fancy pleases ? 
As strength decays with after days, 

And eyes have ceased to glisten, 
Those souls alone not older grown 

Will have the ears to listen. 



SONGS 395 

Keep youth a guest of heart and breast, 

And, though the hair be whiter, — 
Ho ho ! ha ha ! Tra la la la ! 

You hear them all the brighter ! 

XIX 
Jack and Joe 

Jack's a scholar, as all men say, 

Dreams in Latin and Greek, 
Gobbles a grammar in half a day, 

And a lexicon once a week ; 
Three examiners came to Jack, 

' Tell to us all you know ; ' 
But when he began, ' To Oxford back,' 

They murmured, ' we will go.' 

But Joe is a regular fool, says Jack, 
And Jack is a fool, says Joe. 

Joe's a player, and no mistake, 

Comes to it born and bred, 
Dines in pads for the practice' sake, 

Goes with a bat to bed. 
Came the bowler and asked him, ' Pray, 

Shall I bowl you fast or slow ? ' 
But the bowler's every hair was gray 

Before he had done with Joe. 
But Joe is a regular fool, &c. 

Morning wakes with a rousing spell, 

Bees and honey and hive, 
Drones get up at the warning bell, 

But Jack was at work at five. 
Sinks the day on the weary hill, 

Cricketers homeward flow ; 
All climb up in the twilight chill, 

But the last to leave is Joe. 
But Joe is a regular fool, &c. 

' Fame,' says Jack, ' with the mind must go, 

Says Joe, ' With the legs and back ; ' 
' What is the use of your arms ? ' says Jo e, 

' Where are your brains ? ' says Jack. 
Says Joe, ' Your Latin I truly hate,' 

Says Jack, ' I adore it so,' 
' But your bats,' says Jack, ' I nowhere rate,' 

' My darlings,' answers Joe. 
But Joe is a regular fool, &c. 



396 EDWAED BOWEN 

Can't you settle it, Joe and Jack, 

Settle it, books and play ? 
Dunce is white and pedant is black, 

Haven't you room for gray ? 
Let neither grammar nor bats be slack, 

Let brains with sinews grow, 
And you'll be Eeverend Doctor Jack, 

And you'll be General Joe ! 
But Joe is a regular fool, &c. 



XX 
Wimbledon, 1879 

Wake, Harrow boys, together, 

Wake, townsmen, up ! 
Here's the Shield, marching hither, 

Likewise the Cup. 
Drums, beat to rouse the people, 

Fifes, tootle too ! 
Back home to Harrow steeple 

Welcome to you ! 

Wake, Harrow boys, &c. 

First day of summer weather, 

First ray of sun ; 
Twelve schools are in together, 

Odds, twelve to one. 
Twelve schools are off together, 

Gone home to sup ; 
Left the Shield, marching hither, 

Likewise the Cup ! 

Wake, Harrow boys, &c. 

In came the Duke all ready, 

Plume, sash, and spurs ; 
' Who's that a winning,' said he, 

• Over the furze ? 
' Why, bless my hat and feather, 

What can be up ? 
There's the Shield, inarching thither, 

Likewise the Cup ! ' 

Wake, Harrow boys, &c. 

Bismarck and Cetewayo, 

Pale down to boots, 
Ejaculate ' my O, 

How Harrow shoots ! 



SONGS 397 

Once give them grass and heather, 

Once rifles up — 
Straight the Shield marches hither, 

Likewise the Cup ! 

Wake, Harrow boys, &c. 



XXI 

Larry 

Who is Larry, and what is his sin ? 

What has he done to be so discredited ? 
String, and leather, and air within, 

Never an ounce of brains inherited ; 
Up and volley him into the sky ; 
Down he will tumble by-and-by ; 

Flout and flurry him, kick and worry him, 
Doesn't he like a journey high ! 

Tie up his throat, or he feels the air ; 

Very unwise, to lounge and tarry is ; 
Give him a kick, and it sets him square, 

Kicks are physic for such as Larry is ; 
Over the grassy marsh and mud. 
Like a bubble of soap and sud, 

Flout and flurry him, kick and worry him, 
Till he is down with a thump and thud ! 

Little he knows, and nought he cares, 

Whether you kick with grace and suavity ; 

Down he will come without the stairs, 
All along of the force of gravity ; 

Larry is fat, and needs to go ; 

Larry is dull and plump and slow ; 

Flout and flurry him, kick and worry him, 

Wake him a bit with a touch of toe 1 

That is his path, where the swallows roam, 
That is a road that needs no gravelling ; 

Life is dull, if you bide at home ; 
Larry is made of stuff for travelling ! 

Now you may lift him once again, 

Give him a view of park and plain ; 
Flout and flurry him, kick and worry him, 

That is the way to induce a brain 



398 BDWAED BOWEN 

XXII 
Books 

High on a tree, 

Like a Pope to see, 
A blackamoor rook (and as grave as he) 

Laid down the law, 

With ponderous caw, 
With a tweak of head and a twist of jaw, 

' Follow the rest 

Out of the nest, 
Perch on the steeple, and peck with the best ! 

1 Try your wing, 

Now in the spring, 
Hop and flutter and fight and sing ; 

Eooklings' joys 

Are worry and noise, 
Soon in the air you will gladly poise, 

And follow the rest, &c. 

' Branches yield 

Shelter and shield, 
But the best of the fun is far afield ; 

Those who know 

Where a flight can go, 
Bob the wheat that the farmers sow. 

Folloio the rest, &c. 

' Starlings preach, 

With twitter of speech, 
How many yards a gun can reach ; 

Fly amain 

Over the plain ! 
Chance the gun, if you get the grain ! 

Follow the rest, &c. 

' Up with the head ! 

Fondled, fed, 
Here you may rest awhile in bed ; 

Wait for the time 

When your wings shall climb 
Over the sky in the morning's prime ! 

Follow the rest 

Out of the nest, 
Perch on the steeple, and peck tvith the best /' 



SONGS 399 

XXIII 

Down the Hill 

Jog, jog, tramp, tramp, down the hill we run, 

When the summer games come with the summer sun ; 

On the grass dreaming a lazy grassy dream, 

List to the merry click, willow tapping seam ; 

Balls ring, throats sing, to a gallant tune, 

Cheerily, cheerily, goes the afternoon. 

Down the hill, down the hill, after dinner drop, 

Sulky boys, sulky boys, stay upon the top ! 

Jog, jog, tramp, tramp, down the hill we scud, 
In the dull December, plashing in the mud ; 
Legs, as their manner is, turn to black and blue ; 
Mud spatters head to foot — well, and if it do ? 
Legs yet will carry us through another day ; 
Mud is only water modifying clay. 

Down the hill, down the hill, after dinner drop, 

Sulky boys, sulky boys, stay upon the top ! 

Jog, jog, tramp, tramp, down the hill at last, 
When the Tuesday morning tells of labour past ; 
Now, just a week or two, put the books to bed, 
Horse, dog, gun and rod, you come out instead ; 
Who wouldn't, now and then, amiably thus 
Gratify the home folks with a sight of us ? 

Down the hill, down the hill, after dinner drop, 

Sulky boys, sulky boys, stay upon the top ! 

XXIV 

Awake ! 

The wind blew o'er the plain, and cried, 

Awake, boys, awake ! 
The best of the day is the morning tide, 

Awake, boys, awake ! 
With a plunge and a rush to the air, the air, 
And safe in the school, with a chime to spare, 
And who, if it freeze with winter breeze, 
Is half a coward enough to care ? 



400 EDWARD BOWEN 

Or grieve if he, in his ardour bold, 
Or even his master, catches cold ? 

So awake, boys, awake ! 

The joys of the morning take ! 
They sleep in the city, and more's the pity, 

But you on the hills, awake ! 

The spring came whispering, clear and low, 

Awake, boys, awake ! 
The birds were building an hour ago, 

Awake, boys, awake ! 
The lark is lost in the blue, the blue, 
The cricketing fields are drenched in dew ; 
The delicate things on feet and wings 
Are busily finding work to do ; 

And every animal, great or less, 

Has dressed as much as it means to dress 

So awake, &c. 

Work, with her sister, Play, came by — 

Awake, boys, awake 1 
Plenty to learn from both, they cry, 

Awake, boys, awake I 
There's pleasure in toil no doubt, no doubt ; 
There's also pleasure, perhaps, without ; 
There's books that pray to be read to-day, 
There's balls that long to be kicked about ; 
B\it none who roost on the Drowsy tree 
Can ever be friends with me, or me 1 

So awake, &c. 



XXV 

Good Night 

Goon night ! Ten o'clock is nearing ; 

Lights from Hampstead, many, fewer, more, 
Fainter, fuller, vanishing, appearing, 
Flash and float a friendly greeting o'er ; 
Read them, read them, 

Ere the slumber come ; 
Goodwill speed them 
Here across the gloom ; 
All good comes to those who read aright ; 
See they are twinkling, Good night ! 



SONGS 401 



Good night ! How they dart anigh thee 

Bright glad rays for repetition known ; 
If the task be crabbed and defy thee, 
How they blink a sympathetic groan ! 
Wit acuter — 

Guesses free and fast — 
Tyrant tutor 

Placable at last — 
Such the blessings sparkle to the sight ; 
Take them and answer, Good night ! 

Good night 1 What shall follow after ? 

Wish great play, and vigour ever new, 
Wish for race and merriment and laughter — 
Hampstead lights must surely wish it too ! 
Luck befriend thee 

From the very toss ; 
See, they send thee 
Victory across ; 
Speed the ball, and animate the fight : 
So, till the morning, Good night ! 

Good night ! Sleep, and so may ever 

Lights half seen across a murky lea, 
Child of hope, and courage, and endeavour, 
Gleam a voiceless benison on thee ! 
Youth be bearer 

Soon of hardihood ; 
Life bo fairer, 

Loyaller to good ; 
Till the far lamps vanish into light, 
Rest in the dream-time. Good night 



XXVI 

Songs 

How does the song como, 

Whence up-swell, 
Whence on the tongue come, 

Playmates, tell ! 
Say, from the waste time 

Chance sounds grow, 
Throats' idle pastime ? 

No, no, no 1 

D D 



402 EDWAED BOWEN 

While 'mid the hreezes 

Life breathes free, 
Ere trouble freezes 

Youth's blue sea, 
'Mid hopes attendant, 

Play, work, home, 
Surging, resplendent — 

So songs come ! 

Where does the song go, 

While words fly, 
Somewhere along go, 

Somewhere die ? 
Say, into far land 

Sound-waves flow, 
Lost in the star-land ? 

No, no, no ! 
Songs, where the thought was 

If aught true, 
If tender aught was, 

There hide too ; 
Down in the chamber 

Hearts hold deep, 
Cradled in amber — 

So songs sleep ! 

Can yet the song live, 

Once more come, 
Voiceful and strong live — 

Now all dumb ? 
Say, will it slumber, 

Faint, thin, low, 
Tears not to number ? 

No, no, no ! 
When droops the boldest, 

When hope flies, 
When hearts are coldest, 

Dead songs rise ; 
Young voices sound still, 

Bright thoughts thrive, 
Friends press around still — 

So songs live ! 



SONGS 403 

XXVII 
The Niner 

He may have been little, or may have been tall, 
But his tale is so sad, you will weep for it all, 
And it happened along of a bat and a ball ! 

Boo-hoo ! 
Of Cricketers never a finer, 
From Nottinghamshire to China, 
But he never could manage a niner ! 

Boo-hoo ! Boo-hoo ! Boo-hoo ! 

Chorus — Of Cricketers never, &c. 

He planted his feet — and he lifted his bat — 
And his reach you would wonder excessively at : 
And the field said, ' For nine he will surely hit that.' 1 

Boo-hoo ! 
But they ran and they scampered and fielded, 
And such was the work that their zeal did, 
That merely an eighter it yielded, 

Boo-hoo ! Boo-hoo I Boo-hoo ! 

Chorus — Of Cricketers never, &c. 

But he finally struck a majestical blow, 
And didn't it, didn't it, didn't it go, 
If not for a mile, for a quarter or so ! 

Boo-hoo ! 
Oh run, I believe you, he then did, 
With speed and celerity splendid, 
And stopped with the nine of them ended, 

Boo-hoo ! Boo-hoo ! Boo-hoo ! 

Chorus — Of Cricketers never, &c. 

And just as the niner was done and entire, 

He threw himself down to rejoice — (and perspire), 

' One short,' said the fair and impartial umpire ! 

Boo-hoo ! 
So he gave up and went and ate ices, 
Of various colours and sizes, 
And died of pulmonary phthisis, 

Boo-hoo ! Boo-hoo ! Boo-hoo ! 
Chorus— Of Cricketers never, &c. 

O D 2 



404 EDWAED BOWEN 

XXVIII 

Plump a Lump 
[A Football Song] 

When suns are hot, and fields are full 

Of shouts and cries that scare you, 
You lie in corners dark and dull, 

An empty lump of air, you ! 
You sit and sulk, a frozen hulk, 

With pads and bats above you, 
Till winter comes again, and then, 
You ugly dear, I love you ! 

then you dance and prance along, 

A dancer, prancer, jumper, 
You toss and thump, so plump a lump 
As who can find a plumper ? 

When boys are dressed in all their best 

For church and school on Sunday, 
And sober folk can take their rest, 

And sit a bit for one day ; 
You ne'er appear in gaudy cheer, 

Nor freak nor fancy takes you, 
But dream and doze in working clothes, 

Till Monday, dear, awakes you ! 
then, &c. 

At night when we are wondrous wise 

With iEschylus and Caesar, 
So weak you are in enterprise, 

You hardly ask what these are ! 
No whit you care, your skin's so thick, 

For learning, mind, or virtue ; 
Oh I should dearly like to kick — 

But not, my love, to hurt you ! 
then, &c. 

XXIX 
Tom 

Now that the matches are near, 
Struggle, and terror, and bliss, 

Which is the House of the year ? 
Who is the hero of this ? 
Tom! 



SONGS 405 

Tom, who with valour and skill, too, 

Spite of the wind and the hill, too, 
Takes it along sudden and strong, 

Going where Tom has a will to ; 
And so let us set up a cheer, 0, 
That Jaffa and Joppa can hear, 0, 
And if a hurrah can waken the Shah, 
Why, then, let us waken him, singing, Hurrah 

Rules that you make, you obey ; 

Courage to Honour is true ; 
Who is the fairest in play, 

Best and good-temperedest, who ? 
Tom! 
Tom, who is sorry and sad, too, 
When there are bruises to add to ; 

Why did he crush Jack with a rush ? 
Only because that he had to ! 
And so let us, &c. 

Base is the player who stops 

Fight, till the fighting is o'er ; 
Who follows up till he drops, 
Panting and limping and sore ? 
Tom ! 
Tom, who with scuffle and sprawl, too, 
Knows where he carries the ball to ; 

Ankles and toes ! look how he goes ! 
Through them and out of them all, too ! 
And so let us, &c. 

Some, who their Houses enthrone, 

Rest, when the victory comes ; 
Who will go on till his own 
Boasts an eleven of Toms ? 
Tom! 
Tom, who in cloud and in clear, too, 
Goes with the lads he is dear to ; 

Is it a dream ? There is the team ; 
Tom may be real, and here, too ! 
And so let us, &c. 



406 EDWAED BOWEN 

XXX 

A Gentleman's a-Bowling 
[Dedicated to F. S. Jackson, Lord's, 1888] 

cabby, trot hira faster, 

hurry, engine, on ! 
Come glory or disaster, 

Before the day be done 1 
Ten thousand folks are strolling, 

And streaming into view, 
A gentleman's a-bowling 

(More accurately, two). 

With changes and with chances 

The innings come and go, 
Alternating advances 

Of ecstasy and woe ; 
For now 'tis all condoling, 

And now — for who can tell ? 
A gentleman's a-bowling — 

It yet may all be well. 

Light Blue are nimbly fielding, 

And scarce a hit can pass ; 
But those the willows wielding 

Have played on Harrow grass 1 
And there's the ball a-rolling, 

And all the people see 
A gentleman's a-bowling, 

And we're a-hitting he ! 

Ten score to make, or yield her ! 

Shall Eton save the match ? 
Bowl, bowler 1 go it, fielder ! 

Catch, wicket-keeper, catch I 
Our vain attempts controlling 

They drive the leather — no ! 
A gentleman's a-bowling, 

And down the wickets go. 

And now that all is ended, 

Were I the Queen to-day, 
I'd make a marquis splendid 

Of every one of they I 
And still for their consoling, 

I'll cheer and cheer again 
The gentleman a-bowling, 

And all the other ten ! 



SONGS 407 

XXXI 
If Time is up 

If time is up and lesson is due, and youth has got to learn, 
I creep to School, if needs must be, and masters soft and stern ; 
And one will give me good marks, and one will give me bad, 
And one will give me nothing at all for all the pains I had ; 
But good come, bad come, for what you must you can, 
And heigh-ho, follow the game, till boy shall grow to man. 

The worse the time the better the end, and under sky and sun 

I go to play the cricketer's part, and turn the bowlers on ; 

And one will bowl me fast balls, and one will bowl me slow, 

And one will bowl me cunning and straight, and then the bails will go ; 

But fast come, slow come, the grass and winds are free, 

And heigh-ho, follow the game, the world is fair for me. 

They glide, the months of worry and work, of desk and floor and grass 
And till you trust them, fright the soul, and as you trust them, pass ; 
And one will bring me bright days, and one will bring me dull, 
And one will bring me trouble enough, till all the days are full ; 
But bright come, dull come, they came the same before, 
And heigh-ho, follow the game, and show the way to more. 

XXXII 

Many Years Ago 
[A Song for Old Harrovians] 

One look back ! as we hurry o'er the plain, 

Man's years speeding us along; 
One look back ! from the hollow past again 

Youth coming flooding into song. 
Tell how once in the breath of summer air 

Winds blew fresher than they blow ; 
Times long hid, with their triumph and their care, 

Yesterday — many years ago ! 

How throngs poured from the lesson to the street, 

Straw-topped, busy, rushing by ! 
Stones rang brisk with the tread of many feet, 

Fields laughed, merry with the cry. 
Skill, high taught to endeavour and endure, 

Plucked bright honour from the foe ; 
Blood throbbed warmer, and fellowship was sure, 

Yesterday — many years ago ! 



408 EDWAED BOWEN 

Fell sage counsel on never-heeding ears ? 

Mixed frail folly with the good ? 
Not less trust had a medicine for fears, 

Hope built towers as it would. 
Firelight dreams still summon from afar 

Play's hot battle, ebb and flow ; 
Hearts made one in the flush of mimic war, 

Yesterday — many years ago ! 

All good things of the heaven and the earth, 

Drop soft blessing on the hill ! 
Crown fair youth with her heritage of mirth, 

Weak souls quicken into will ! 
Years, bear gaily the trophies you have won, 

Strong life bringing, as you go ; 
Shine, bright suns, shine happy as you shone 

Yesterday — many years ago ! 



Loed's, 1873 

Tell them, Harrow has won again ! 

Shout with a heart and will ! 
Shout till it float across the plain, 

And echo around the hill ! 
Four sad years of a long defeat 

Over and gone to-day ; 
Flash the news till the gladness greet 

Continents far away ; 
Say how, honour and fame at stake, 
Somebody played for the old School's sake. 

True as the speeding bullets go, 

Quick as the fencer's wrist, 
Eton played to the fast and slow, 

Be it break, or rise, or twist ; 
Faint and feeble we hung the head ; 

Hope in the heart sank low ; 
'Seventy-three, we surely said, 

Will be just like 'seventy-two : — 
Then was the turn of the wizard's wand — 
Somebody, somebody, bowled left-hand ! 

Two of us all too soon are gone — 

Hark to the Eton cheer ! 
One that we put our hopes upon 

Had chosen to wait a year. 



VEESES 409 

Slow we counted them — run for run — 

How many more to tie ? 
Loud we boasted the cut for one, 

And treasured the single bye — 
Somebody ! cover — or longstop — or — 
Somebody's hitting about for four ! 

And somebody bowled them straight and strong, 

And somebody high and true, 
And somebody threw to an inch along, 

Till somebody's hands were blue ; 
And when at the last we trembling said, 

' Can anyone now be found 
To keep, with valour of hand and head, 

For a hundred runs, his ground '? ' 
Somebody — ah ! he would, we knew — 
Somebody" played it steady through ! 

To the ropes the last hit gaily went, 

As the first to the ropes had gone, 
And we breathed as divers breathe, all spent, 

Who rise to the air and sun. 
And ever when Harrow toils in vain, 

And the Harrow hopes are low, 
May patience come to the rescue then, 

And pluck with the patience go ; 
And in all, and more than all, our play, 
Somebody do as he did to-day ! 

Lord's, 1878 

There we sat in the circle vast, 

Hard by the tents, from noon, 
And looked as the day went slowly past, 

And the runs came, all too soon ; 
And never, I think, in the years gone by, 

Since cricketer first went in, 
Did the dying so refuse to die, 

Or the winning so hardly win. 

Ladies clapped, as the fight was fought. 

And the chances went and came ; 
And talk sank low, till you almost thought 

You lived in the moving game. 
O, good lads in the field they were, 

Laboured and ran and threw ; 
But we that sat on the benches there 

Had the hardest work to do ! 



^ EDWAED BOWEN 

Feet that had sped in games of yore, 

Eyes that had guarded well, 
Waited and watched the mounting score, 

And the hopes that rose and fell ; 
And girls put frolic and wagers by, 

As they felt their pulses throb ; 
And old men cheered — but the cheering cry 

Went gurgling into a sob ! 

What is it ? forty, thirty more ? 

You in the trousers white, 
What did you come to Harrow for, 

If we lose the match to-night ? 
If a finger's grasp, as a catch comes down, 

Go a thousandth part astray — 
Heavens ! to think there are folks in town 

"Who talk of the game as play ! 

' Over ' — batsmen steadily set ; 

' Over ' — maiden again ; 
If it lasts a score of overs yet, 

It may chance to turn the brain. 
End it, finish it ! such a match 

Shortens the breath we draw. 
Lose it at once, or else — A catch ! 

Ah! 

Loed's, 1900 l 

Harrow wins — declare it, 

All the ranks of man ! 
Ehine to Tiber bear it, 
Eome to Astrakhan ! 
0, the universe is small to hold the verses, 
When for the lads who won the match you lift it all you can ; 

Praise and pat and pet them, never more forget them, 
When for the lads who won the match you lift it all you can ! 

Cheer him, whale and porpoise ! 

Ocean fishes, cheer ! 
Over veldt and dorp, us 
Kriiger yet may hear ! 
See him hit and slash them, drive and cut and lash them ! 
On the top of the scoring-board his eighty-eight are clear ! 

Praise and pat and pet them, never more forget them, 
On the top of the scoring-board his eighty-eight are clear ! 

It will be observed that each verse is a semi-acrostic : First verse, Harrow 
second verse, Cookso[n] ; third verse, H. S. Kaye ; fourth verse, Wilson ; fifth verse, 
E. Crake. 



VEESBS 411 

How the bat they wielded 
Smote the ball around ! 
Kangaroos to field it, 
Antelopes to bound ! 
Yes, and how they caught, too, clutched it as they ought to, 
Ever so high, and near and far, and spinning, and close to ground ! 

Praise and pat and pet them, never more forget them, 
Ever so high, and near and far, and spinning, and close to ground ! 

' Well, has luck betrayed us ? ' 

If you trust the Hill, 
Luck may fail to aid us, 
Skill and valour will ! 
Oh, to stop and feel them — then to rush and steal them — 
Now or never to dare and do, when Daring matches Skill ! 
Praise and pat and pet them, never more forget them, 
Now or never to dare and do, when Daring matches Skill ! 

Euns but sis to tie them ! 
Can they top the score ? 
Rise and hover by them, 
All the brave of yore ! 
Keep the sight from blinking, stay the heart from sinking, 
End is coming ; a one, a four, a one — a tie — A Four ! 

Praise and pat and pet them, never more forget them, 
End is coming ; a one, a four, a one — a tie — A Four ! 



From the Visitors' Book, Buttermere Inn, Crummockwater 

St. George was spent — so runs the lay told still o'er pipes and flagons, — 

With weeding Britain all the day of griffins, gnomes, and dragons ; 

Of all the sprites of hill and tree, hard hitters, merry fighters, 

And almost — but that could not be — of all the guide-book writers : 

Now, fighting o'er, he needed sore — oh ! and his wings were weary !— 

Some silent dell by fount and fell, quiet and cool and cheery : 

He glanced at Malvern's boasted side, Snowdon in cloud-land hidden, 

' Snowdon,' he cried, ' is coekneyfied, and Malvern physic-ridden. 

The Lakes will rest the good saint best ; unblessed with wife or daughter, 

I yet can trace my cousin's face, St. Patrick, o'er the water.' 

At Lowood's inn St. George he tried — what ? with no bride beside him ? — 

At Ambleside he nest applied — Miss Martineau defied him ! ' 

Rydal had got nor dish nor pot to welcome the new-comer, 

Wast Head was full of Alpine men, in training for the summer. 

At length he spied a smooth hill side, with lake and meadow planted, 

Encircled all with mountain wall, deep bosomed, fairy haunted ; 

He looked no more — his doubt was o'er — with most angelic flutter 

His pinions drooped, and down he swooped, down, on the Mere of Butter. 



412 EDWAED BOWEN 

The matron gave what matrons have of welcome and of dinner, 

What best they give to all who crave, be they or saint or sinner. 

She gave him eggs — she broiled him ham — she would have added nectar, 

But who can think what saints may drink ? — unless indeed the rector. 

' Woman,' St. George at parting said, ' thy whisky's not the poorest ; 

Thy chops are good for heavenly food, and any mortal tourist. 

Be thou the patron of the vale, of cot and farm and dairy, 

The queen of inns o'er hill and dale, of hostels tutelary ; 

And when the guest comes sore distressed from Pillar, Scarf, or Gable, 

With thee he best shall find good rest, good bed and eke good table ; 

Nor when he begs with weary legs, feet sore, and empty stomach, 

Shall see or hear of better cheer than by the Lake of Crummock.' 



An Episode of Balaclava 

When slow and faint from off the plain 

Pale wrecks of sword and gun, 
Torn limbs, and faces racked with pain, 

Crept upwards, one by one ; 
When, striving as the hopeless strive, 

Aseare with shot and flame, 
Few pallid riders came alive, 

And marvelled as they came ; 

Dared any, while with corpses rife 

Bed gleamed the ghastly track, 
Bide, for the love of more than life, 

Into the valley back ? 
Pierce, where the bravest tarried not, 

Stand, where the strongest fell, 
Face once again the surge of shot, 

The plunging hail of shell ? 

He trod of old the hill we tread, 

He played the games we play ; 
The part of him that is not dead 

Belongs to us to-day; 
When next the stranger scans the wall 

Where carved our heroes are, 
Wits — poets — statesmen — show them all, 

And then, the one hussar. 

He sought his chief — a dim reply 
From waving hand was brought ; 

' Passed on ' — to safety, meant the cry ; 
Amid the guns, he thought ; 



VEESES 413 

No question more ; in purpose clear 

His soldier's creed was strong ; 
Where rode, he knew, the brigadier, 

Must ride the aide-de-camp ! 

He turned his horse's bridle round, 

Ere one could breathe a breath, 
And fronted, as on practice ground, 

The nearest way to death. 
In pride of manhood's ripest spring, 

Hopes high, and honour won, 
He deemed his life a little thing, 

And rode, a soldier, on. 

Up, slow, the homeward remnant fled, 

Staggered, and fell, and ran ; 
Down moved, through flying and through dead, 

One hopeless splendid man ; 
Alone, unrecked in heat of fray, 

He stemmed the wave of flight, 
And passed in smoke and flame away 

From safety and from sight. 

So ends the story ; comrade none 

Saw where he wounded lay ; 
No brother helped with cheering tone 

His stricken life away ; 
Alone, the pain, the chill, the dread, 

Crept on him, limb by limb ; 
The earth which hides the nameless dead 

Closed nameless over him. 

soldiers of a bloodless strife, 
friends in work and play, 

Bear we not all a coward life 

Some moment in the day ? 
So, lest a deed of gallant faith 

Forgotten fade from view, 

1 take the tale of Lockwood's death, 
And write it down for you. 



P. L. C. 

Not surely a week since we saw him, 
Health brimming in feature and limb ; 

Let me try to imagine and draw him, 
Ere fancy and feature are dim. 



414 EDWAED BOWBN 

Tall, eager, a face to remember, 

A flush that could change as the day ; 

A spirit that knew not December, 
That brightened the sunshine of May. 

A child ; in his childhood contented ; 

Soon clouded, and sooner serene ; 
Faults many, and quickly repented ; 

Much love, where repentance had been. 
Strong life, and an ardour of living ; 

Quick blood, to enjoy and to hope ; 
Most happy when, void of misgiving, 

He coloured the world to his scope. 

Is gentleness dear to the sainted ? 

Is simpleness precious above ? 
Shall a soul, with humanity tainted, 

Through humbleness quicken to love ? 
O comrades, when, in him and through him. 

As weakness and brightness would blend. 
You saw the soft nature, and knew him, 

What more will you wish for your friend '? 

What is he ? No answer. Behind him 

Press faces as gallant as he. 
Perchance you may happen to find him 

As you roam through the ages to be. 
There will still be the smile, and more golden ; 

There will still be the trust, and more true ; 
And, with manhood to nerve and embolden, 

The boy will be dearer to you. 



1878. 



Shemuel 

Shbmuel, the Bethlehemite, 
Watched a fevered guest at night ; 
All his fellows fared afield, 
Saw the angel host revealed ; 
He nor caught the mystic story, 
Heard the song, nor saw the glory. 

Through the night they gazing stood, 
Heard the holy multitude ; 
Back they came in wonder home, 
Knew the Christmas kingdom come, 
Eyes aflame, and hearts elated ; 
Shemuel sat alone, and waited. 



VERSES 415 

Works of mercy now, as then, 
Hide the angel host from men ; 
Hearts atune to earthly love 
Miss the angel notes above ; 
Deeds, at which the world rejoices, 
Quench the sound of angel voices. 

So they thought, nor deemed from whence 

His celestial recompense. 

Shemuel, by the fever bed, 

Touched by beckoning hands that led, 

Died, and saw the Uncreated ; 

All his fellows lived, and waited. 



E. G. 

Still the balls ring upon the sun-lit grass, 

Still the big elms, deep shadowed, watch the play ; 

And ordered game and loyal conflict pass 
The hours of May. 

But the game's guardian, mute, nor heeding more 
What suns may gladden, and what airs may blow, 

Friend, teacher, playmate, helper, counsellor, 
Lies resting now. 

( O ver ' — they move, as bids their fieldsman's art ; 

With shifted scene the strife begins anew ; 
' Over ' — we seem to hear him, but his part 

Is over, too. 

Dull the best speed, and vain the surest grace- 
So seemed it ever— till there moved along 

Brimmed hat, and cheering presence, and tried face 
Amid the throng. 

He swayed his realm of grass, and planned, and wrought ; 

Warned rash intruders from the tended sward ; 
A workman, deeming, for the friends he taught, 

No service hard. 

He found, behind first failure, more success ; 

Cheered stout endeavour more than languid skill ; 
And ruled the heart of boyhood with the stress 

Of helpful will. 

Or, standing at our hard-fought game, would look, 
Silent and patient, drowned in hope and fear, 

Till the lips quivered, and the strong voice shook 
With low glad cheer. 



416 EDWAED BOWEN 

Well played. His life was honester than ours ; 

We scheme, he worked ; we hesitate, he spoke ; 
His rough-hewn stem held no concealing flowers, 

But grain of oak. 

No earthly umpire speaks, his grave above ; 

And thanks are dumb, and praise is all too late ; 
That worth and truth, that manhood and that love 

Are hid, and wait. 

Sleep gently, where thou sleepest, dear old friend ; 

Think, if thou thinkest, on the bright days past ; 
Yet loftier Love, and worthier Truth, attend 

What more thou hast ! 



1884. 



F. P. 

One friend and he, when thrills of warmer spring 

Lent health and voice to boyish frame and tongue, 
Stood side by side, or parted but to bring 

Their treasured counsel to the scattering throng. 
Tory, and Whig ; stout will, and courtly grace : 

One strong for strife, one ignorant of foe ; 
Both high of heart, and matched in honour's race; 

And in what else united ? Ah, we know. 

Harrow, what service that from narrower soul 

We give the hill where hopes and courage move, 
Can rival his who spent, ungrudging, whole, 

For thee, with thee, his seventy years of love ? 
Eager in boyhood ; then a hero, great 

In fields of sport, from vulgar flaunting free ; 
Tried in life's larger labours, tasks of state ; 

But most himself when caring most for thee 1 

How gentle, helpful, playful ! who that came 

Shy, weak of limb, yet dreaming fame and skill, 
But found, ere half he whispered House and name, 

A voice that nurtured effort, strengthened will ? 
And never a Harrow triumph swelled the heart, 

And never a cloiid fell dark on School or boy, 
But he, strong brother, claimed the foremost part, 

First in our griefs, and gladdest in our joy. 

1 So shifts the leg — so shapes the arm, the wrist ' — 
Ah, but the voice, the gesture ! see him watch 

With English strength, with Irish warmth, or list 
The boyish count of innings or of catch. 



1895. 



VEESES 417 

The sunny humour rippling on the lips 
'Mid pleasant tales of ancient strife and stress ; 

And hope that knew no languor nor eclipse, 
And clear calm eyes, and gallant tenderness. 

Our fields have lost his presence. Never more, 

In the long splendour of the summer days, 
Game after game, as swells the mounting score, 

His temperate voice shall gladden into praise. 
Others will toil as he did ; still shall hold 

The chain that binds us ; skill nor love shall cease ; 
But he, the first, the purest friend of old, 

Rests in the silence of the endless Peace. 

Yet, dear memory of the friend of youth, 

Die not, but stay, and quicken, at his name, 
All that we have of valour and of truth, 

Honour in strife, and simpleness in fame. 
Still keep his teaching fresh, with arm and foot 

Supple, and firm, and scorning sloth alone : 
Keep fieldsmen watchful, batsmen resolute ; 

But make our hearts as loyal as his own ! 



PRINTED BY 

BPOTTISWOODK AND CO. LTD., NEW-STREET SQUARE 

LONDON 



E E 



a Classiffeb Catalogue 

OF WORKS IN 

GENERAL LITERATURE 

PUBLISHED BY 

LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. 

39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON, E.C. 

91 and 93 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK, and 32 HORNBY ROAD, BOMBAY. 



CONTENTS. 



BADMINTON LIBRARY (THEJ- - 12 
BIOGRAPHY, PERSONAL ME- 
MOIRS, &c. 9 

CHILDREN'S BOOKS ... 32 

CLASSICAL LITERATURE, TRANS- 
LATIONS, ETC. --- - 22 
COOKERY, DOMESTIC MANAGE- 
MENT, &c. - - - , - - 36 
EVOLUTION, ANTHROPOLOGY, 

&C. ------- 21 

FICTION, HUMOUR, &c. - - - 25 

FUR, FEATHER AND FIN SERIES 15 

FINE ARTS {THE) AND MUSIC - 36 
HISTORY, POLITICS, POLITY, 

POLITICAL MEMOIRS, &c. - - 3 
LANGUAGE, HISTORY AND 

SCIENCE OF 20 

LOGIC, RHETORIC, PSYCHOLOGY, 

&c. - - 17 



MENTAL, MORAL, AND POLITICAL 
PHILOSOPHY 17 

MISCELLANEOUS AND CRITICAL 
WORKS 38 



POETRY AND THE DRAMA 



23 



POLITICAL ECONOMY AND ECO- 
NOMICS - - - - - - 20 



POPULAR SCIENCE - 
RELIGION, THE SCIENCE OF 
SILVER LIBRARY (THE) 
SPORT AND PASTIME - 

PHILOSOPHICAL 



STONYHURST 
SERIES '- 



TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE, THE 
COLONIES, &c. - - - ' - 

WORKS OF REFERENCE - 



30 

21: 

33 
12 

19 

ir 
3r . 



INDEX 

Page 



OF AUTHORS AND EDITORS. 



Abbott (Evelyn) 

<J. H. M.) 

(T. K.) - 

(E. A.) - 

Acland (A. H. D.) 
Acton (Eliza) - 
Adelborg (O.) - 
/Eschylus 
Ainger (A. C.) - 
Albemarle (Earl of) 
Alcock (C. W.) 
Allen (Grant) - 
Allgood (G.) - 
Alverstone (Lord) 
Angwin (M. C.) 
Anstey (F.) 
Aristophanes - 
Aristotle - 
Armstrong (W.) 
Arnold (Sir Edwin) 

(Dr. T.) - 

Ashbourne (Lord) 
Ashby (H.) 
Ashley (W. J.) - 
Avebury (Lord) 
Ayre (Rev. J.) - 

Bacon 

Bagehot (W.) - ( 
Bagwell (R.) - 
Bailey (H. C.) - 
Baillie (A. F.) - 
Bain (Alexander) 
Baker (J. H.) - 

(Sir S. W.) 

Balfour (A. J.) 
Ball (John) 
Banks (M. M.) - 



- 3.22 

3 

- 17.18 

17 

3 

39 



3 

15 

36 

25 

22 

17 

13 

n.23 

3 

3 

36 



3i 

9.17 
20, 38 

3 
25 

3 

17 
38 
11 



Baring-Gould (Rev. 

S.)- - - -21,38 
Barnett (S. A. and H.) 20 
Baynes (T. S.) - - 38 
Beaconsfield (Earl of) 25 
Beaufort (Duke of) - 13, 14 
Becker (W. A.) - 22 
Eeesly (A. H.) - - 9 

Bell (Mrs. Hugh) - 23 
Bent (J. Theodore) - 11 
Besant (Sir Walter)- 3 

Bickerdyke (J.) - 14, 15 

Bird (G.) - - - 23 
Blackburne (J. H.) - 15 
Bland (Mrs. Hubert) 24 

Blount (Sir E.) - 9 

Boase (Rev. C. W.) - 6 

Boedder (Rev. B.) - 19 
Bonnell (H. H.) 



Booth (A. J.) - 
Bottome (P.) - 
Bowen (W. E.) 
Brassey (Lady) 

(Lord) 

Bright (Rev. J. F.) - 
Broadfoot (Major W.) 
Brooks (H. J.) - 
Brown (A. F.) - 

(J. Moray) 

Bruce (R. I.) - 
Bryce(J.)- - - 
Buck (H. A.) - 
Buckland (Jas.) 
Buckle (H. T.) - 
Bull(T.) - 
Burke (U. R.) - 
Burne-Jones (Sir E.) 
Burns (C. L.) - 
Burrows (Montagu) 



Page 
Butler (E. A.) - - 30 

Cameron of Lochiel is 
Campbell(Rev.Lewis) 21 ,22 
Chasseloup - Laubat 

(Marquis de)- - 13 
Chesney (Sir G.) - 3 

Childe-Pemberton(W.S.) 9 
Chisholm (G. C ) - 31 
Cholmondeley-Pennell 

(H.) --- 13 
Christie (R. C.) - 38 
Churchill(W. Spencer) 4, 25 
Cicero - - - 22 
Clarke (Rev. R. F.) - 19 
Climenson (E. J.) - 10 
Clodd (Edward) - 21,30 
Clutterbuck (W. J.)- 12 
Colenso (R. J.) - 36 

Conington (John) - 23 
Conway (Sir W. M ) 14 
Conybeare (Rev. W.J.) 

& Howson (Dean) 
Coolidge (W. A. B.) 
Corbett ()ulian S.) - 
Coutts (W.) - 
Coventry (A.) - 
Cox (Harding) 
Crake (Rev. A. D.) - 
Craven (W. G.) 
Crawford (J. H.) 

(R.) - - - 

Creed (S.) 
Creighton (Bishop) -4, 6, 9 
Cross (A. L.) 5 

Crozier (J. B.) - - 9, 17 
distance (Col. H.) - 15 
Cutts (Rev. E. L.) - 6 



Dabney (J. P.) 



23 



Page 
Dale (L.) 4 

(T. F.) - 

Dallinger (F. W.) 
Dauglish (M. G.) 
Davenport (A.) 
Davidson (A. M 

(W. L.) - 

Davies (J. F.) - 
Dent (C. T.) - - i 4 
De Salis (Mrs.) - 36 
De Tocqueville (A.) - 4 

Devas (C. S.) - - 19, 20 
Dickinson (G. L.) - 4 

— (W. H.) - - 38 
Dougall (L.) - 
Dowden (E.) - 
Doyle (Sir A. Conan) 
Du Bois (W. E. B.)- 
Dufferin (Marquis of) 
Dunbar (Mary F.) - 
Dyson (E.) 

Ebrington (Viscount) 
Ellis (J. H.) - 

(R. L.) - - 

Erasmus - - - 
Evans (Sir John) - 



14 
5 
9 

25 
C.) 22 

17, 20, 21 



25 

40 

25 

5 

14 

25 
26 

15 

15 
17 



Falkiner (C. L.) 
Farrar (Dean) - - : 
Fitzmaurice (Lord E.; 
Folkard (H. C.) 
Ford (H.) - 
Fountain (P 
Fowler (Edith H.) - 
Francis (Francis) 
Francis (M. E.) 
Freeman (Edward A.) 
Fremantle (T. F.) - 
Fresnfield (D. W.) - 



38 

4 
,26 

4 
15 
16 
11 
26 
16 
26 

6 
16 
14 



INDEX OF 

Page 
Frost (G.) - - - 38 
Froude (James A.) 4,9,11,26 
Fuller (F. W.) - - 5 

Furneaux (W.) - 30 

Gardiner (Samuel R.) 5 

Gathorne-Hardy (Hon. 

A. E.) - - 15, 16 
Geikie (Rev. Cunning- 
ham) ... 38 
Gibbons (J. S.) - 15 

Gibson (C. H.)- - 17 
Gleig (Rev. G. R.) - 10 
Gore-Booth (Sir H. W.) 14 
Graham (A.) - - 5 

(P. A.) - -15,16 

(G. F.) - - 20 

Granby (Marquess of) 15 
Grant (Sir A.) - - 17 
Graves (R. P.) - - 9 

Green (T. Hill) - 17, 18 
Greene (E. B.)- - 5 

Greville (C. C. F.) - 5 

Grose (T. H.) - - 18 
Gross (C.) - - 5 

Grove (F. C.) - - 13 

(Lady) - - 11 

(Mrs. Lilly) - 13 

Guiney (L. I.) - - 9 

Gurdon (Lady Camilla) 26 
Gurnhill (J.) - - 18 
Gwilt (J.) - - - 31 

Haggard (H. Rider) 

11, 26, 27, 38 
Hake(0.)- - - 14 
Halliwell-Phillipps (J.) 10 
Hamilton (Col. H. B.) 5 
Hamlin (A. D. F.) - 36 
Harding (S. B.) - 5 

Harmsworth (A. C.) 13, 14 



AUTHORS 

Page 
Keary (C. F.) - - 23 
Kelly (E.)- - - 18 
Kent (C. B. R.) - 6 

Kerr (Rev. J.) - - 14 
Kielmansegge (F.) - 9 

Killick (Rev. A. H.) - 18 
Kitchin (Dr. G. W.) 6 

Knight (E. F.) - - 11, 14 
Kostlin (J.) - 10 

Kristeller (P.) - 



AND EDITORS— continued. 



37 

Ladd (G. T.) - - 18 
Lang (Andrew) 6, 14, 16, 21, 
22, 23, 27, 32, 3g 
5 
13, 15 
6 

20 



9,36 
37 



Harte (Bret) 
Harting(J. E.)- 
Hartwig (G.) - 
Hassall (A.) - 
Haweis (H. R.) 
Head (Mrs.) - 
Heath (D. D.) - 
Heathcote (J. M.) - 

(C. G.) - - 

(N.) - - - 

Helmholtz (Hermann 
von) - - - 
'Henderson (Lieut- 
Col. G. F. R.) - 
jHenry (W.) 
Henty (G. A.) - 
Herbert (Col. Kenney) 
LHiggins (Mrs. N.) - 
Hill (Mabel) - 
Hillier (G. Lacy) 
Hime (H. W. L.) - 
Hodgson (Shadworth) 
iHoenig (F.) - 
Hogan(J. F.) - - 
Holmes (R. R.) 
Homer - 
Hope (Anthony) 
Horace - 
Houston (D. F.) 
Howard (Lady Mabel) 
Howitt (W.) - 
Hudson (W. H.) - 
Huish (M. B.) - 
Hullah (J.) 
Hume (David) - 

(M. A. S.) 

Hunt (Rev. W.) 
Hunter (Sir W.) - 
Hutchinson (Horace G.) 

13, 16, 27, 38 
Ingelow (Jean) - 23 

Ingram (T. D.) - 6 

James (W.) - - 18, 21 
Ja/neson (Mrs. Anna) 37 
'efferies (Richard) - 
Jekyll (Gertrude) 
Jerome (Jerome K.) - 
Johnson (J. & J. H.) 
Jones (H. Bence) 



Joyce (P. W.) - 
Justinian - 

Kant (I.) - 
Kaye (Sir J. W.) 



38 
38 
27 
39 
31 
6, 27, 39 
18 

18 
6 



Lapsley (G. T.) 
Lascelles (Hon. G.) 
Laurie (S. S.) - 
Lawley (Hon. F.) 
Lawrence (F. W.) 

Lear (H. L. Sidney) - 36 
Lecky (W. E. H.) 6, 18, 23 

Lees (J. A.) - - 12 

Leighton (J. A.) - 21 

Leslie (T. E. Cliffe) - 20 

Lieven (Princess) - 10 

Lillie (A.) - - - 16 

Lindley (J.) - - 31 

Locock (C. D.) - 16 

Lodge (H. C.) - - 6 

Loftie (Rev. W. J.) - 6 
Longman (C. J.) - 12, 16 

(F. W.) - - 16 

(G. H.) - - 12, 15 

(Mrs. C. J.) - 37 

Lowell (A. L.) - - 6 

Lucian - - - 22 

Lutoslawski (W.) - 18 
Lyall (Edna) - - 27,32 

Lynch (G.) 6 

(H. F. B.)- - 12 

Lyttelton (Hon. R. H.) 13 

(Hon. A.) - - 14 

Lytton (Earl of) - 24 

Macaulay (Lord) 6, 7, 10, 24 

Macdonald (Dr. G.) - 24 

Macfarren(Sir G. A.) 37 

Mackail (J. W.) - 10 

Mackenzie (C. G.) - 16 

Mackinnon (J.) - 7 

Macleod (H. D.) - 20 

Macpherson (Rev.H.A.) 15 

Madden (D. H.) - 16 

Magniisson (E.) - 28 

Maher (Rev. M.) - 19 

Mallet (B.) - - 7 

Malleson (Col. G. B.) 6 

Marchment (A. W.) 27 

Marshman (J. C.) - 9 

Maryon (M.) - - 39 

Mason (A. E. W.) - 27 

Maskelyne (J. N.) - 16 

Matthews (B.) - 39 

Maunder (S.) - - 31 
Max Miiller (F.) 

10, 18, 20, 21, 22, 27, 39 

May (Sir T. Erskine) 7 

McFerran (J.) 14 

Meade (L. T.) - - 32 

Mecredy (R. J.) - 13 

Melville (G. J. Whyte) 27 

Merivale (Dean) - 7 

Merriman (H. S.) - 27 
Mill (John Stuart) - 18, 20 
Millias (J. G.) - - 16, 30 

Milner (G.) - - 40 

Mitchell (E. B.) 13 

Monck (W. H. S.) - 19 

Montague (F. C.) - 7 

Moore (T.) - - 31 

(Rev. Edward) - 17 

Morgan (C. Lloyd) - 21 

Morris (Mowbray) - 13 

(W.) - - 22, 23, 24, 

27, 28, 37, 40 

Mulhall (M. G.) - 20 

Murray (Hilda) - 33 

Nansen (F.) - - 12 

Nash (V.) 7 

Nesbit (E.) - - 24 

Nettleship (R. L.) - 17 

Newman (Cardinal) - 28 

Nichols (F. M.) - 9 



Page 

Ogilvie (R.) - - 22 
Oldfield (Hon. Mrs.) 9 

Onslow (Earl of) - 14 
Osbourne (L.) - - 28 



Packard (A. S.) 
Paget (Sir J.) - 
Park (W.) 
Parker (B.) 
Payne-G«llwey (Sir 



16 
40 

• '4, 16 



Oakesmith (J.) 



R.) 
Pearse (H. H. S.) 

Pearson (C. H.) - 10 

Peek (Hedley) - - 14 
Pemberton (W. S. 

Childe-) - - 9 

Pembroke (Earl of) - 14 

Pennant (C. D.) - 15 

Penrose (H. H.) - 33 
Phillipps-Wolley(C) 12,28 

Pierce (A. H.) - - 19 

Pitman (C. M.) - 14 
Pleydell-Bouverie (E. O.) 14 

Pole (W.) - - - 17 
Pollock (W. H.) - 13, 40 

Poole (W.H. and Mrs.) 36 

Poore (G. V.) - - 40 

Pope (W. H.) - - 15 

Powell (E.) 7 

Powys (Mrs. P. L.) - 10 

Praeger (S. Rosamond) 33 



Prevost (C.) 
Pritchett (R. T.) 
Proctor (R. A.) 



13 
H 
17.30 

6 

24 

7 

8,25 

3,8 

9 

23 



Raine (Rev. James) 
Ramal (W.) 
Randolph (C. F.) 
Rankin (R.) 
Ransome (Cyril) 
Reid (S. J.) 
Rhoades (J.) - 

Rice (S. P.) - - 12 

Rich (A.) - - - 23 
Richardson (C.) - 13, 15 

Richmond (Ennis) - 19 

Rickaby (Rev. John) 19 

(Rev. Joseph) - 19 

Ridley (Lady Alice) - 28 

Riley (J. W.) - - 24 

Roberts (E. P.) - 33 

Robertson (W. G.) - 37 
Roget (Peter M.) - 20, 31 

Rolls (Hon. C. S.) - 13 
Romanes (G. J.) 10, ig, 21,24 

(Mrs. G. J.) - 10 

Ronalds (A.) - - 17 

Roosevelt (T.) - - 6 

Ross (Martin) - - 28 
Rossetti (Maria Fran- 

cesca) - - - 40 

Rotheram (M. A.) - 36 

Rowe (R. P. P.) - 14 

Russell (Lady)- - 10 

Saintsbury (G.) - 15 

Salomons (Sir D.) - 13 

Sandars (T. C.) - 18 

Sanders (E. K.) - 9 
Savage-Armstrong(G.F.)25 

Scott (F. J.) - - 37 
Scott-Montagu 

(Hon. J.) - - 13 
Seebohm (F.) - - 8, 10 
Selous (F. C.) - - 12, 17 
Senior (W.) - - 14, 15 

Seth-Smith (C. E.) - 14 

Seton-Karr 8 

Sewell (Elizabeth M.) 28 

Shadwell (A.) - - 40 

Shakespeare - - 25 

Shand (A I.) - - 15 

Shaw (W. A.) - - 8 
Shearman (M.) - 12, 13 

Sheehan (P. A.) - 28 

Sheppard (E.) - - 8 

Sinclair (A.) - - 14 

Skrine (F. H.) - - 9 

Smith (C. Fell) - 10 

(R. Bosworth) - 8 

(T. C.) - - 5 

Smith (W. P. Haskett) 12 

Somerville (E.) - 28 

Sophocles - - 23 

Soulsby (Lucy H.) - 40 



Page 
40 



Southey (R.) 
Spedding (J.) 

Spender (A. E.) - 12 

Stanley (Bishop) - 31 

Stebbing (W.) - - 2S 

Steel (A. G.) - - 13 

Stephen (Leslie) - 12 

Stephens (H. Morse) 8 
Sternberg (Count 

Adalbert) - - 8 

Stevens (R. W.) - 40 
Stevenson (R. L.) 25,28,33 

Storr (F.) 17 

Stuart-Wortley(A.J.) 15 

Stubbs(J. W.)- - 8 

(W.)- - - 8 

Suffolk & Berkshire 

(Earl of) - - 14 

Sullivan (Sir E.) - 14 

Sully (James) - - 19 

Sutherland (A. and G.) S 

(Alex.) - - 19, 40 

(G.) - - - 40 

Suttner (B. von) - 29 

Swan (M.) - - 29 

Swinburne (A. J.) - 19 

Symes (J. E.) - - 20 

Tait(J.) ... 7 

Tallentyre (S. G.) - 10 

Tappan (E. M.) - 33 

Tavlor (Col. Meadows) 8 

Tebbutt (C. G.) - 14 

Terry (C. S.) - - 10 

Thomas (J. W.) - 19 
Thomson (H. C.) - 

Thornhill (W. J.) - 23 

Thornton (T. H.) - 10 

Thuillier (H. F.) - 40 

Todd (A.)- - - 8 

Tout (T. F.) - - 7 

Toynbee (A.) - - 20 
Trevelyan (Sir G. O.) 

6, 7, 8, 9, 10 

(G. M.) - - 7, 8 

Trollope (Anthony)- 29 

Turner (A. G.) - 40 
Tyndall (J.) - - 9, 12 
Tyrrell (R. Y.) - -22,23 

Unwin (R.) - - 40 

Upton(F.K. and Bertha) 33 

Van Dyke (J. C.) - 37 

Vanderpoel (E. N.) - 37 

' Veritas ' - - - 5 

Virgil 23 

Wagner (R.) - - 25 

Wakeman (H. O.) - 8 

Walford (L. B.) - 29 

Wallas (Graham) - io 

(Mrs. Graham)- 32 

Walpole (Sir Spencer) 8, 10 

(Horace) - - 10 

Walrond (Col. H.) - 12 

Walsingham (Lord)- 14 

Ward (Mrs. W.) - 29 

Warwick (Countess of) 40 

Watson (A. E. T.) - 14 

(G.L.) - - 14 

Weathers (J.) - - 40 
Webb (Mr. and Mrs. 

Sidney) - - 20 

(Judge T.) - 40 

(T. E.) - - 19 

Weber (A.) - - 19 

Weir (Capt. R.) - 14 
Wellington (Duchess of) 37 

Wemyss (M. C. E.)- 33 

Weyman (Stanley) - 29 
Whately(Archbishop) 17,19 

Whitelaw (R.) - - 23 

Whittall(SirJ. W. )- 40 

Wilkins (G.) - - 23 

■ (W. H.) - - 3 

Willard (A. R.) - 12 

Willich (C. M.) - 31 

Witham (T. M.) - 14 

Wood (Rev. J. G.) - 31 

Wood-Martin (W. G.) 22 

Wyatt (A. J.) - - 24 

WylieQ.H.) - - 8 

Yeats (S. Levett) - 29 

Yoxall (J. H.) - - 29 

Zeller (E.) - - 19 



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Morris (William) — continued. 

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25 



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26 MESSRS. LONGMANS & CO.'S STANDARD AND GENERAL WORKS. 



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3 1 



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27 



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%* For Mr. Proctor's other books see pp. 17 
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MESSRS. LONGMANS & CO.'S STANDARD AND GENERAL WORKS. 



3i 



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32 MESSRS. LONGMANS & CO.'S STANDARD AND GENERAL WORKS. 



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MESSRS. LONGMANS & CO.'S STANDARD AND GENERAL WORKS. 



33 



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Penrose. — Ch ubb y: a Nuisance. 
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Praeger (Rosamond). 

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Roberts. — The Adventures of 
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Stevenson.— A Child's Garden of 
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Tappan. — Old Ballads in Prose. 
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Wemyss.— ' Things We Thought 
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34 MESSRS. LONGMANS & CO.'S STANDARD AND GENERAL WORKS. 



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35 



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Knight's (E. F.) Where Three Empires Meet: a 
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Proctor's (R. A.) The Moon. 3s. 6d. 

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Proctor's (R. A.) Our Place among Infinities : 

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Rossetti's (Maria F.) A Shadow of Dante. 35. 6d. 

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Stephen's (Sir Leslie) The Playground of Europe 
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36 MESSRS. LONGMANS & CO.'S STANDARD AND GENERAL WORKS. 



Acton. — Modern Cookery. By 
Eliza Acton. With 150 Woodcuts. Fcp. 
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Cookery, Domestie Management, &e. 

De Salis (Mrs.) — continued. 
Entries 2 la Mode. Fcp. 8vo., 

is. 6d. 

Floral Decorations. Fcp. 8vo., 
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Gardening a la Mode. Fcp. 8vo. 
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National Viands a la Mode. Fcp. 
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Tempting Dishes for Small In- 
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Wrinkles and Notions for 
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Angevin. — Simple Hints on Choice 
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Ashby. — Health in the Nursery. 
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Bull (Thomas, M.D.). 

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AGEMEA T OF THEIR HEALTH DURING THE 

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De Salis (Mrs.). 

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Dogs: A Manual for Amateurs. 
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Lear. — Maigre Cookery. 
Sidney Lear. i6mo., 2s. 



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